Whatever happened to free viewing?

My walk is also on a bus route and over the last few days, I've noticed that Setanta Sports have launched an advertising campaign on both Arriva buses in the Tamworth area and West Midlands Travel buses in Birmingham. "The season begins and ends on Setanta' it says, noting that Setanta now have the live rights to 46 Premier League matches as well as the Charity Shield (God bless it...), the Scottish Premier League and, to quote Setanta's website, 'an array of mouthwatering pre-season fixtures."
I don't have Sky and have never bothered with it since its launch in 1992. This has largely been for three reasons; 1) Mrs W won't allow it on cost grounds; 2) I spend so little time watching television at home that I couldn't justify that cost; 3) There are several digital televisions in the office, one of which is usually tuned to Sky Sports 1 so that if there is anything I really want to watch, I can generally do so at work (memo to the people drawing up the floor plan at Fort Dunlop - please could you ensure that I don't have to leave my desk to watch a digital TV with a Sky Sports subscription, or is that a bit too cheeky?).
The same applies to Setanta, although as the owner of a Freeview box and a non-league fan, I am quite attracted to the idea of not paying a monthly subscription while getting the chance to see the odd non-league game from the Blue Square Premier.
But what is starting to get my goat is the amount of live sport that is only available on pay television. I can see why deals with the satellite companies are attractive to governing bodies desperately seeking extra cash, but I do wonder whether they are heading up a blind alley.
Premier League football has already done so by becoming a competition where the top four and bottom four at the end of the season can be predicted with 95 per cent certainty now. Despite working on the sports desk of a newspaper, I freely admit that I couldn't tell you what happened in the Guinness Premiership last season, other than to say that Worcester Warriors narrowly escaped relegation.
That's because I have never seen a Premiership game live on television, you see. Television draws in an audience in a way that no other medium does and there are still a considerable number of viewers in this country who cannot afford to/will not on principle take up subscription television. That may change as technology moves on apace but I think it will be the case for the foreseeable future.
As Peter Sharkey explained in his Business of Sport column in The Post last Saturday, horse racing's rulers are floating the idea of a £10m Sovereign Series of races to run throughout the season. They want one broadcaster to hold the rights for the series and if I was a betting man, which I most certainly am, I'd bet they look to a satellite channel first.
If they do, in my opinion, it could sound the death knell of substantial interest in Flat racing in this country because it would slash the television audience at a stroke.
The worst example is Test cricket. The England and Wales Cricket Board saw millions of pound signs as it hurled itself into the arms of Sky and for what, exactly? A team that cannot win a five-day game against a less-than-stellar South Africa side and what appears to have been a very-much-less-than-capacity crowd for yesterday's opening day of the Edgbaston Test.
I have another confession. It was only when I came into work at 3pm every day that I was reminded of the existence of the first Test series of the summer, against New Zealand. I completely forgot about BBC Radio's Test Match Special and I can't have been the only person who used to watch the Test on terrestrial TV with the sound turned down and TMS on in the background.
The Twenty20 explosion, of course, will make the game even more awash with money and give Sky and/or Setanta more material with which to fill their schedules. But if the ECB really wants to secure the game's future, it could restore Test cricket to terrestrial TV when the rights come up again.
In the meantime, I might just be tempted with Setanta - but only for the Blue Square Premier, you understand.