Richard Sutcliffe: Radio's own goal as Bantams are relegated from airwaves

For the first time this season, Saturday resulted in supporters of Peter Taylor's Bantams unable to listen to live commentary of their team on the club's local BBC radio station.

City had travelled to Barnet knowing defeat would make the catastrophic spectre of relegation, even in October, loom that little bit larger.

Therefore, a lot of supporters tuned into BBC Radio Leeds in the hope of listening to some long-overdue good news.

Instead, what they got was the bombshell revelation that, thanks to a decision by the station's powers-that-be, there would be no live coverage from Underhill.

In its place across all Radio Leeds' frequencies would be commentary of Colchester United v Huddersfield Town with any news from Bradford's game restricted to short updates.

The decision had not been trailed beforehand, hence the resulting anger many felt at this apparent relegation from the airwaves for City – something I was made aware of via calls from several disgruntled fans.

Such an angry reaction was, to me, perfectly understandable.

Covering just one West Yorkshire match per weekend smacks of cost-cutting without thinking of the consequences as the people who will suffer the most are those who provide the funding for the BBC in the first place – licence-fee payers.

It will not be just Bradford fans who suffer, either, with Huddersfield not guaranteed to be the main game every weekend.

As if that was not enough to ruin what has always been an excellent service by Radio Leeds, when Leeds United are playing the live commentary is going to be left decimated by continual interruptions from two other games.

Anyone doubting the potential for problems caused by this may be interested to know Town fans listening at home on Saturday missed both first-half goals due to coverage having been switched to Barnet v Bradford at the crucial moments.

Now, of course, Radio Leeds have not always been in a position to offer live coverage of their three main clubs with Leeds United games having only been available on the club's own station, Yorkshire Radio, for the past four years.

Likewise, Bradford home matches were not broadcast last season due to club and station being unable to reach agreement over the value of the rights.

The key difference in these two instances was that Radio Leeds lost the coverage through no fault of their own. This time, the damage has been entirely self-inflicted with the station bosses being guilty of scoring an almighty own goal.

Worst of all, the decision seems to fly in the face of what the Beeb are supposed to be all about – fulfilling the remit of Public Service Broadcasting.

Sports programmes consistently deliver some of the highest audiences on local radio.

This means that a high number of those who fund the BBC – ie me and you – are listening, and, therefore, getting something back for our money.

Now, however, that is no longer the case and it is why I hope West Yorkshire's football fans bombard whoever has taken this ridiculous decision – I'll bet my last fiver it is no-one on the sports team – asking why would anyone sabotage the quality of their own work in such a crass way and with complaints aimed at attempting to force a re-think.