Yesterday afternoon three free-to-air television channels had elite men's road cycling on at same - one live - two in replay.

Road cycling has a fair following in Australia but surely it's not the golden egg that channels want to squabble over.

Yet even with the sports with the mega-followings, there are some very strange things happening. It's a possible explanation that those who lost interest in the Big Bash over the past fortnight did so because the Hurricanes weren't setting the competition on fire.

But a more plausible reason is that the broadcasters stopped showing games on Friday and Saturday night. Sure it's the holiday period but to show a sport every other night but not on Friday and Saturday? That's weird.

ELSEWHERE IN SPORT

Presumably, those games were on pay-television but it makes no sense to get folks in - and then shut them out.

For many purchasing pay-to-view is not simply about accessing one sport. The deal-maker is often about getting access to a niche interest as well.

But presumably the boffins in charge of what they show only see the biggest picture. The Foxsports package has for example for five or more years now shown international athletics via its Eurosport channel.

That arrangement has ended and now athletics fans - and there might be a few more this year in the lead up to an Olympics - have to buy into another pay-to-view service altogether.

Meanwhile back to the cricket and the cameo exit of our top players away from our domestic tournament and our television screens to play three one-day matches in India.

Now for sure, this was a deal that Cricket Australia probably could not refuse. The Indians are pretty good at doling out the big dollars when they want something.

All well and good but really strange in terms of maintaining a contract of interest with fans - particularly older Australians - whose only or most available option is to watch free-to-air television.

Now that soccer in Australia has recovered it, national league, to a viable and more popular level via a premier competition through the summer months there is consideration being given to heading back to the more traditional winter timeslot.

One of the reasons is player-welfare. Expecting our best domestic players to strut their stuff in often oppressively hot conditions is a risk. But so too is going head-to-head with the other three football codes in a contest for television timeslots and the hearts and minds of fans.

For the major codes the presence of willing and able cashed-up television partners is crucial for their survival in the style to which they and their player cohorts have become accustomed.

Disrupt that and major sports telecasts as we know them might be a thing of the past.

A thing of the past like ABC radio broadcasts of the Olympic Games. It may not be an annual thing but ABC voices telling it as it is at the Games when it's actually happening has been as iconic as Cricket on the Radio.

ABC television's involvement in both is long gone - commercial realities forcing it out of the market-place. But the connection through radio is even older and should be preserved.

But lurking in the background there is something that could change the whole paradigm.

Five years ago offer up live streaming as an option for telecasting sporting events and there would be laughter in return. Just like any suggestion that one of the major networks secondary channels could be a suitable medium.

Free-to-air major channels were the only option. Fans wouldn't watch anything else. Sponsors wouldn't be interested.

But a generation of the global population now doesn't watch television at all apparently. They are content to pay to stream and to watch their chosen fare on tiny screens.

At the risk of alienating older generations, major sports will have to make the decision soon about how much they invest in that basket.

As the IOC is doing by introducing new sport attractive to younger audiences - the major professional codes will have to work out how best they can win those same hearts and minds. The advertisers already have.