KEY POINTS:
Television looks saturated with sport. It eats a generous slice of the early evening news bulletins and has hours of event coverage, such as yachting and rugby recently. There are weeks when TVNZ's weekend schedule would wither and die without motor racing.
Beyond these lie TV3's Hyundai Sports Tonight and Pulp Sport, and TVNZ's Game of Two Halves. The first is an extended version of the news segment or stories that missed the news cut.
A reporter tests the sports knowledge of passers-by and the show wraps up with a snappy summary, sans commentary, of the action from the US scene.
Pulp Sport is "sport as comedy". Frontmen Bill and Ben are comedians with an eye to gently prodding the locals. Tonight they walk through Christchurch with a sign disparaging the city's beloved Richie McCaw.
Game of Two Halves is Oaf Heaven, a quiz show with regulars Marc Ellis, Matthew Ridge, Mike King, and Martin Devlin taking laddishness to its frontiers.
Having all this on television brings the arts community to burning with envy. However, while the arts and book people's programmes are dumped into cruel time slots they are in-depth work.
Sport tends to settle for facts, clips and results, as if it struggles to find another way of coping with the elephant in its room.
I would, for instance, love a detailed look at the netballers' feelings after being burdened with the nation's hopes, after rugby, yachting and cricket all missed the big prizes.
And, how come the rowers, seemingly always one funding decision away from fundraising raffles, win everything on offer, while the All Blacks scoff at an airline's bill for four-and-a-half tonnes of extra luggage, and don't.
While I make no claim to being a technological guru, I suspect television could have instantly ended the fuss over the forward pass. Surely the picture could be stopped at the key moment and the image rotated to give us the referee's view of the action. If he was obstructed and could not see, and ditto for the linesmen - and perfect storms do happen - then enough already. If they had a clear view the necessary arrangements can be made for assembling the stocks in Aotea Square.
We await a detailed assessment of the likely candidates for the All Black coaching job. Naturally, if all this has been done and I have missed it, then apologies.
A template is out there, or rather returns in February. It's Maori Television's award-winning CODE, a wide-ranging look at sports issues.
In the meantime, we are served a lot of sport but have to wonder if we are being well served by it.
* Hyundai Sports Tonight, TV3, weeknights, 11.00pm
* Game of Two Halves, One, Monday 10.05pm
* Pulp Sport, TV3, Thursday, 9.30pm
