The BBC Governors are inviting license fee payers to suggest questions to be asked at their AGM on July 19th. This was my, admittedly hastily written, question:

As a supporter of rugby league I am disappointed both by the BBC's coverage of this sport and the responses I have received to complaints about it. As such my question to the governors is: why does the BBC treat rugby league so poorly?

Although I live in London, which has a Super League team, the corporation's weekly highlights programme cannot be received outside of the north of England.

This is despite the fact that as a Sky Digital subscriber I can watch rugby union programme Scrum V on BBC 2W here in London, even though neither the Celtic nor Welsh leagues have a team in the area. Allowing such access is a move I applaud but feel cheated that rugby league does not receive the same benefits. Especially given that it does represent and cover a local interest.

As a license fee payer I spend the same sum on my license in London as someone living in the north of England, yet living there would afford me a better range of programming, and one that would be of more interest to me.

I have complained to the BBC about this topic on numerous occasions only to be met by dismissal and excuses. One of which is that there is only demand for the programme in the north.

Yet this seems in contradiction with the BBC's national coverage of the Challenge Cup on Grandstand, and having since last season negotiated the rights to show national highlights of the Super League playoffs on Grandstand. Also, locally BBC London provide online commentaries for every London Broncos game, irrespective of whether they are on the radio, and have invested in being better able to report from New Rivers Stadium, home of the London Skolars.

Clearly given all of this investment and increased coverage the BBC are implicitly accepting that there is interest outside of the tradition areas of Yorkshire and Lancashire. And yet while you do regularly show highlights of our local team you deny us access to see them.

As well as London having two professional sides it is also one of the fastest growing areas in the UK for the sport and so claiming a lack of interest is not only unfair, it is also without foundation.

Other BBC highlights programmers such as Match of the Day or Rugby Special are shown nationally even thought neither the Premier League not the Zurich Premiership having a team in every (English) BBC region. So why should this reason justify restricting The Super League Show? Additionally Grandstand does manage to show coverage of minority sports such as Squash despite having limited appeal.

Club rugby league matches receive a similar average attendance to English club rugby union; as a sport it is one of Sky Sports most watched; and it is seeing continued growth in both interest and participation throughout the country. It should therefore satisfy any criteria to be considered worthy of national coverage.

Even accepting the BBC's premise though, as a public service broadcaster surely it should be a commitment of the corporation to serve the interests of all license payers including minorities. The excellent BBC FOUR being a good example of this. To argue that a film like "The Story of the Weeping Camel", which I saw this week, is deserving of the BBC's time when rugby league is not is cultural elitism.

While I accept that the BBC has no obligation to cover any sport, and that it is financially impossible to satisfy everyone, the issue here is simply one of scheduling. The BBC is already investing in making the programme, surely then it is unfair to the license fee payers throughout the rest of the country to deny them the right to see this programme that they are already paying for.