Negotiations between the BBC and the Six Nations Committee over the competition's next TV deal are deadlocked, with both sides becoming increasingly exasperated by the other's behaviour.
The tournament's rulers have dismissed the Beeb's offer of £70 million over the next three years as derisory. They believe that the corporation has exploited the fact that it is the sole bidder for the rights to offer much less than the £100 million they feel the matches are worth.
For their part, the BBC think that the Six Nations Committee are expecting an unrealistic sum, given the depressed state of the TV sports rights market. 'The Six Nations people have gone quiet and that's a matter of concern. We feel it's reached a stalemate,' said a Beeb source. 'They haven't even asked us to come in, talk about it and maybe make a new offer.'
So will the BBC up their bid? 'We have offered what we can. It's very competitive. It's not a Mickey Mouse sum. The trouble is, they think it is.'
The committee may now up the ante by refusing to conclude a new, long-term deal and instead offer the BBC only a one-year contract and wait for the TV sports rights market to improve. That option is thought to have been discussed at a meeting in Dublin last week of the Six Nations broadcasting committee. Another plan is to ask Sky to reconsider and make a decent offer as a way of driving up the price, but Sky appear uninterested and are hoarding their money for the next Premiership football contract.
It should have been a marriage made in rugby heaven: the BBC getting back the entire Six Nations for the first time since 1997 and the tournament getting much-needed exposure on terrestrial TV. But it looks as if wrangling over the pre-nup may yet scupper this particular union. Who will blink first, I wonder?
BBC boffins have created two new cameras to make coverage of the Commonwealth Games swimming events the most intimate ever. 'Dipcam', attached to a pole in the water at the ends to catch the turns, and 'barnaclecam', a moveable camera clipped to the side of the pool, were devised by engineers at the Outside Broadcast Resources Unit.
'They will provide action shots from positions nobody could normally get into. For viewers, it'll be almost as if they're there in the pool,' says Malcolm Kemp, the BBC's director of production for the Commonwealth Games.
Buoyed up by John McEnroe's huge success behind the microphone, the BBC have signed up another tennis legend to commentate at Wimbledon - Chris Evert.
The winner of three ladies' singles titles in SW19 will commentate on the women's game and be a regular studio pundit when the championships start later this month.
She joins a formidable array of former players who have become some of the faces and voices of the Beeb's coverage, such as Boris Becker, Pat Cash and Pam Shriver.
