Interesting article in The Age the other day about Free to air TV Sport. Here's a part of it:

"Cricket is hot but it's also geographically compromised. The minute the Australian team sets a toe out of the country, it goes stone cold, apparently. After Seven televised an Ashes tour from England, a previous network boss declared that "cricket can't work in prime-time". It's not just Seven, either. For varying reasons, no network will touch Australian tours overseas. This is only the national cricket team. You'd think they'd been asked to televise championship curling from Reykjavik.

Sport on free TV, as the old Chinese curse goes, is "living in interesting times". It doesn't have the protected species status it once enjoyed. It doesn't sprawl all over our weekend screens for the hell of it, the way it did for many years. Sport on network TV rosters is made to fit in with ratings-driven timeslot imperatives. And it had better earn its keep.

Cricket: Owing to nationwide factional splits over football code preference, this is arguably the number one mass interest sport in the country. As previously mentioned, that exclusively refers to the national side playing here in summer. All free TV stations now rigorously abstain from showing the Australians on overseas tour duty because it might mean showing one less cop show with initials in the title for a few nights, or something. One suspects the networks inadvertently handed Fox Sports a free beer voucher on this one. The one-day merry-go-round games here? Yes, pointless. Yes, Nine will show them. Next."