TalkSport Owner UTV Media: BBC Radio 5 Live Too Focused On Football

TalkSport owner UTV Media said that the BBC should slash the amount of money it spends on mainstream sport on Radio 5 Live and drop its "chest-beating" and "aggressive" approach to its commercial radio rivals, according to John Plunkett of the London GUARDIAN. UTV claimed 5 Live's output was "dominated by football, to the detriment of news and other sport on the broadcaster," and accused station chiefs of trying to "keep football fans within a BBC walled garden." UTV, which competes with the BBC on a "range of sports rights including live Premier League football, made the comments in its submission to the BBC Trust's review of speech radio." It called for a "radical review" of 5 Live's joint news and sport remit, which it said "made sense in an analogue world of spectrum scarcity" but was "increasingly anachronistic in a digital age" (GUARDIAN, 4/1).