Figure skating fades to black on TV

I have been watching the World Figure Skating Championships from Sweden live on my computer.

On a Turkish TV channel that is part sports, part C-SPAN, showing the country’s parliament when the lawmakers are in session.

From the postings on skating news groups, others have been watching live on Internet streams from a variety of countries, including South Korea, China, Slovakia and the United Kingdom.

All this is free – except the usurious monthly fees charged by Internet service providers, that is.

This availability of live coverage makes skating fans winners, but it makes the sport they care about a loser.

Why would a TV network want to pay anything but two plugged nickels for exclusive territorial rights to an event where the territorial exclusivity of the telecast is compromised?

That is among the reasons why ESPN threatened to break its four-year contract with the International Skating Union after one year when it learned the 2005 Moscow worlds were being streamed live into the United States. That meant many of the people who might watch ESPN’s delayed coverage already had seen the event and felt less compelled to tune in.

And that was in the days before YouTube, where videos of parts of the 2008 worlds yet to be aired by ESPN have been readily available.

The ISU has done better with the issue of “geo protection,” but it apparently lacks the resources or commitment to police all the countries whose TV networks have the right to show the event.

ESPN has been paying the ISU $5 million a year for rights to all ISU figure skating and speedskating events, which include the figure skating worlds and Grand Prix series.

But it has not renewed the contract. I reported recently that NBC has agreed to air the 2009 worlds in Los Angeles, but that deal – yet to be officially announced – apparently is for one year and probably will not include any Grand Prix events on TV. The main reason NBC wanted the 2009 worlds is the possibility for live, prime-time programming a year before its broadcasts of the 2010 Olympics.

One thing you can be sure about: No U.S. network will be paying the ISU anything near $5 million a year, which already was more than 75% less than the $22 million a year ABC had paid in the previous deal.

Now no one need have any tag days for ESPN, which is doing just fine, thank you.

And some would argue ESPN should have protected itself by showing the worlds live, at odd hours of the morning and afternoon in the United States, as it did with the soccer Women’s World Cup last fall.

How, then, would the network attract any advertising to defray its skating rights fee? The soccer was a freebie (other than production costs) for ESPN.

Let’s give ESPN some credit here. It has not scrimped on broadcast talent or production at any of its four skating worlds. And it is streaming parts of the competition live on ESPN360.com, which sadly means nothing to those of us who buy our Internet access from Comcast, which is treating ESPN360 the way it has the Big Ten network with its cable subscribers.

So enjoy all the free foreign Internet coverage you are getting.

But remember, the ISU will no longer have $5 million a year to spend on a sport in grave danger of disappearing from TV screens in North America not long after it was widely available on over-the-air networks.

And remember the many skating fans who can’t afford high-speed Internet – or cable TV.

And think of the skaters, whose income possibilities have dwindled in many cases to little more than ISU prize money that will probably be cut again without the infusion of U.S. television manna.

Barely a decade ago, skating was TV’s golden goose.

Now it produces goose eggs on the bottom line.

Philip Hersh covers Olympic sports for The Times and the Chicago Tribune.