October l6th, 1997. Dear Mr. Jones, Many thanks for your letter which I received this morning. We've had a couple of other letters from fellow Notts fans similarly prompted by Mr. Davey's article.I'm not surprised because I know how much people enjoy commentary on "their" team. Our basic problem is money. . or lack of it. Mr Davey hinted at the commentary fees BBC Local radio has to pay in his piece in the programme but he didn't tell the complete story. To do full-match it's £300 to the home team AND £200 to the away team, to do second-half it's £225 to the home team AND £175 to the away team. On average then £450 per game.. it is a costly business! In an ideal world we would be able to do full-match commentary on one of our local teams whenever we wanted.. we could do the AWAY team as you suggest.. in fact you'll recall this is what we DID do in the early 90's when I first became Sports Editor.. but in those days it was free! However we don't live in an ideal world.. this is the real world.. with the harsh realities of fees, budgets and competition. Radio Nottingham Sport has a small budget,one of the smallest in the country amazingly and we have to be extremely careful on how we spend it. After several meetings during the summer we decided we MUST commentate on Forest home and away this season for two main reasons. Firstly they are the biggest club in our patch and therefore the majority of our listeners are Forest fans. And secondly we have to be aware of our competition... GEM AM also do full-match commentary on every Forest match and if we didn't do the same we would lose much of our audience. Unfortunately our agreement with Forest.. together with the associated fees to their opponents.. accounts for the bulk of our budget, leaving very little left for Notts and Mansfield. I would rather save this for later in the season when the clubs could be involved in important promotion tussles away from home for example rather than squander it on relatively meaningless encounters early-on. You will have noticed that we have provided commentary on two Mansfield matches this season. This is because their Chairman Keith Haslam agreed to waive the fee in preference to free publicity... Mr. Davey doesn't think commentary increases Notts County's profile.. indeed he believes it could harm attendances at Meadow Lane. I hope the above has addressed your concern... I hope that we can persuade those that manage the budget here to give us more money next season, so that we don't have to control the purse strings quite so tightly, and are free to do more commentaries on Notts County and indeed Mansfield Town.

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Last Update 8 February 1998

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