The brief, shallow and virtually information-free finish to the Fox Sports broadcast of West Coast's upset win over Essendon on Saturday, was as good an example as you could get as to why AFL TV ratings are down this year in the key Victorian market.

Nine's Friday Night Football coverage used to cover the stories surrounding the build-up to, and fall-out from, each match. In my opinion, this is no longer the case with any of the three existing networks - 10, 7 & Fox Sports.

The spin dutifully reported in the Herald Sun in the above piece was that the quality of games this year affected the key timeslots, but that is simply not the case.

Neither the biggest clubs nor the best games increase TV ratings as much as the best stories do.

The obvious example is the two highest Friday Night Football games in history involved North Melbourne, which has the lowest supporter base in the country.

The night that Wayne Carey took on former teammates Anthony Stevens and Glenn Archer, and when Jason McCartney returned from near death in the Bali bombings to kick the winning goal, even those with no interest in sport were caught up in the emotion of great TV.

And it's not sexist to say that approach gives you a greater chance of getting more women to watch your coverage, which of course can dramatically increase ratings.

After all, the early success of the Nine Network's AFL "Footy Show" was because it was the first sports-based show to have more than 50% of its viewers female, and not coincidentally because Channel 7 enforced a ruling of the time that forbade its competitor showing any replay footage of any AFL game.

Now obviously a Carey or McCartney situation doesn't occur that often, but the mindset of the TV production teams currently doesn't exist to flesh out whatever is the story from their particular game.

That mindset requires managers able and prepared to outlay a big-spending budget, and the legacy for AFL fans from the late Kerry Packer was that he will almost certainly go down as the last network boss to produce the best possible coverage regardless of costs.

Prior to the Essendon and West Coast game you did not need to be Nostradamus to understand that - win, lose or draw - the pressure on Bombers coach Matthew Knights throughout the previous week made his and his club's reaction to whatever happened during the match of interest to most.

So when they meekly capitulated on their home ground to the 16th-placed side on the ladder it was incumbent on the host broadcaster to make the most of the situation from a news perspective.

So how did the Fox Sports handle the post-match when THE story landed in its lap?

How did it take advantage of THE story landing in its lap with THE modern legend of the besieged club James Hird in THEIR commentary box?

Did Fox Sports:

A) Send a camera crew to get close-up shots of the defeated team and their fans reactions towards them as they trudged off the ground? 

B) Get their ground-level commentator Leigh Colbert to the player's race to put a question or two to Knights, who was standing there as the team filed off?

C) Change their post-match wrap-up to reflect THE story, and get their commentators Hird, Jason Dunstall & Dwayne Russell to dissect why a club under so much pressure would react as poorly as it did?

D) Did it bugger off as quickly as possible to a highlights package of a Twenty20 Hampshire v Middlesex English domestic league match from who-cares-when?

Lock in D thanks, Eddie.

In fairness, before Dunstall wrapped up the coverage Hird gave a strong grab - much-quoted in Monday's papers - about Essendon's poor performance, but keep in mind the run-down - which would have been printed earlier in the week - would have said something along the lines of:

"JASON & JAMES WRAP UP. Out time 21:59.30."

So Dunstall as host simply HAD to ask his co-host's thoughts about the disappointing Essendon performance when wrapping up the game, and Hird being Hird, responded in the style that you'd expect from an articulate media performer who intelligently and consistently treads the fine line between not shortchanging his viewers/listeners/readers nor creating headlines which would simply increase the pressure on the club's existing office bearers, and principally coach Knights.

But THE question in AFL circles now is whether Hird wants to coach himself or have any other direct involvement in his club and the question wasn't put to him.

Only last week Luke Darcy in an opinion piece in on AFL.com.au wrote in part:

''James Hird's name will always be mentioned in Essendon coaching discussions. He is one of only a handful of past players whose status and reputation would allow him to walk straight into a senior coaching job. Only Hird himself knows if coaching is on his radar, but his close friendship with Essendon president David Evans means that people will continue to speculate.''

Hird will no doubt say whatever he wants to say on his regular gig on Fox Sports "On The Coach" on Monday night and even if he repeats last week's quote on that show, "There's part of you that wants to one day coach, but it's not part of me that wants to do it in the immediate future," it will create headlines one way or another, but viewers of their game on Saturday night were shortchanged in the process, and it was a timely reminder as to why TV ratings are down.

In this case the law of unintended consequences sees that "maximizing returns" for the AFL from the networks for the broadcasting rights, means that the networks themselves cut costs to the bone.

Lower costs = fewer cameras, fewer producers, fewer production hours, less innovation, less entertainment and fewer viewers.

("Racetrack" Ralphy Horowitz is a full-time racing analyst for private clients and media commentator for Sport 927. He is a former producer at 3AW, SEN, The Footy Show & Sunday Footy Show. He didn't directly work on Nine's AFL coverage.)