The Gardeners' World Blog

Simon Hattenstone has written a column in this morning's Guardian which is one of those drab and outdated attacks on BBC Sport. No, Simon, we won't bother with a letter of complaint. But the argument he puts is a classic one of someone who Just Doesn't Get It.

Let's deal quickly with the argument about TV rights. It's more than the FA Cup and Wimbledon: there's England home internationals, the Six Nations, the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games, Open Golf, the Grand National, the Derby, Royal Ascot, the Rugby League Challenge Cup, World Snooker and a lot more. I greatly respect Sky Sports, but in the same way as we had a relatively thin TV weekend in August I suspect they had a quiet day when we were doing the Men's Singles Final at Wimbledon and the World Cup Final from Germany. And we know you were watching, Simon.

We should also quickly note that our "cold portions of the Premiership" attract rather more viewers than Sky's live coverage. The number of people watching Sky Sports' Premier League match last Sunday afternoon was 1.7m, whereas 2.7m tuned in for MOTD2 that night. From those figures and your comments to Paul Armstrong's blog, there's no doubt Match Of The Day is still a vital programme for millions of viewers. When people have a choice of live football coverage, they overwhelmingly choose the BBC - by a 10:1 margin for the FA Cup Final compared with Sky and by a 5:1 margin for the World Cup Final up against ITV.

But Simon's real sin is not spotting that the media world is changing, and BBC Sport is now rather wider than just television...