My Dad used to take me to places like Calder Park and Phillip Island from the age of about seven.

For years, I have watched national heroes such as Brock, Skaife, Moffatt and Dick Johnson and been happy.

Then someone went and sold the Supercars sport to Foxtel, and they threw a few “highlight” bones to the fans on Channel 10.

It ended up with THE most infuriating “highlight” coverage I have ever experienced last weekend.

Craig Lowndes was going for a record eighth win at Darwin’s Hidden Valley track, and there was supposed to be a one-hour wrap up of the race on Bendigo TV late in the afternoon.

As it began, I started timing it. There were seven minutes of ads, five minutes of cars, six minutes of ads, five minutes of cars.

Until near the end, when there were seven minutes of ads and less than 30 seconds of cars, another seven minutes of ads and, finally, a bit of the last lap.

Thirty-six minutes of ads and 24 minutes of racing, which included regular announcements of who the show’s “sponsors” were.

The same has happened with the World Cup in Russia. Once, this would have been the specialist area for SBS, the network which helped shape soccer in Australia.

But no, a phone service company which is now trying to become a sort-of TV network bought the Russian action and sold it back to fans at $14.99.

Except, oh wait, that’s right, Optus didn’t have the technical ability to provide the service, so for two days, soccer fans got very little.

They didn’t even get their $14.99 back. Optus found a short-term solution: give soccer back to SBS.

Now, the same is happening to cricket.

Who knows what damned wannabe TV broadcaster is going to show what or where this summer?

Foxtel is buying rights to great chunks of the stuff people used to watch on Nine, and flogging the dregs off to other companies. Seven is showing … errr dunno yet, because someone is trying to corner the market on tennis.

And so it goes on and on.

The only certainty is that Australians who used to love settling in front of the box on Sunday afternoons to watch their motorsport heroes, or those who spent pleasant summers watching the Aussies smack the Poms out of the park or relied on SBS to keep them informed of the round ball game will get less – unless they pay more.

And that’s what really riles me.

These new streaming and pay TV services are what are known as “rent-seekers”.

They do not create anything; they create wealth for themselves by buying up rights to a popular program and then stop people watching it unless they pay more for it.

In the process, they damage the nation’s affection for sports, rob them of their popularity – especially among those who can’t afford it – and ultimately ruin the sport.

For example, a Supercar costs about $1 million to build. They need commercial sponsors. 

But if you were, say, Bushwhacked Petroleum, would you want to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to have your brand all over a car only to find the sport’s administrators had done a deal which blocked ordinary Australians from watching? 

The same happened with genuine media companies.

It is no secret companies built on decades of ethical news gathering are doing it tough because there are so many social media organisations pretending to offer news services – without employing a single journalist or intending to ever do so.

One alleged news-ish website shows its writers not as reporters or contributing editors, but as “content providers.”

Discontent providers would be more accurate.