Viewers: Too much sports on BBC1

Britain's BBC1 network has received a flurry of complaints after the popular station aired more than 10 hours of sporting events and coverage in a single day.

The BBC's Web site and complaints hotline were besieged by messages from disgruntled viewers after it dedicated nearly the entire afternoon and evening Saturday to rugby and soccer coverage, The Daily Mail reported Monday.

This is a moneymaking exercise at the cost of the taxpayer, viewer Roberta Adams, 62, said of the publicly-funded channel's Saturday lineup.

I do not mind sport on a Saturday afternoon but for those of us who do not want to go out and like to watch light entertainment programs on a Saturday night, it is a disgrace, she said. That is not what we pay our license fees for.

A spokesman for the BBC said no estimates were available for the total number of complaints. However, he defended the station's programming choices, citing the ratings for the events.

The ratings were tremendous and we had an audience of nearly 15 million during the Six Nations, he said, referring to the Six Nations rugby championship, which made up a portion of Saturday's programming bloc.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International