3 JANUARY 1976, Page 2

Spectator sports

Sir: Your remarks (Spectator's Notebook, December 20) are timely. The BBC's failure to show films of the Australian-West Indies Test series parallels their threat last summer not to screen the England-Ana' tralia series here because the MCC tried to extract a reasonable fee for the privilege. ,

The BBC maintained that cricket was a minority interest on TV, but in my experience any shop with an operational television in its window during the Test match time last summer, had a crowd five deep round its window.

I would suggest that audience research figures are being used by BBC sport mandarins as an excuse for calling last over rather than as a justifiable reason• Happily, BBC Radio is better attuned to the public taste.

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