Only last week, it was being explained to me that the relatively high number of free-to-air channels made available in Germany/West Germany over the last three or four decades of the 20th century made it much harder for pay-TV to take off there, and so perhaps helped pave the way for the Premier League's dominant global position. 

And over the past 25 years - a time of dizzying technological change, a shrinking world and relentless competition for eyeballs - the medium's influence over sport and other audience-grabbing content has grown (and grown) with every jump in the value of the cheques written for the most desirable properties.

So it was with great interest that I read this week's comments from Korea by Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) chief executive Yiannis Exarchos.

I regard Exarchos, a gentle bear of a man, as one of the more original thinkers in the upper reaches of Olympic-land; someone with a sense of perspective.

It was, then, little surprise that what he had to say afforded food for thought.

"The constant influence of broadcasters," he said, was towards "sports closer to the younger generation".

"Sports that are easier to set up in an urban environment.

"We have a legacy of big sports that were basically created in the 19th century in the countryside of Great Britain, when there was ample space and time."

Now I am conscious that, as a relic of 19th century Great Britain myself, I should probably declare an interest.

Nonetheless, even I find it difficult to deny the apparent absurdity of trying to build a global movement compelling to the contemporary youth population with bricks fired disproportionately in kilns set up in one solitary country - albeit one that painted wide swaths of the world pink - well over a century ago.

So far so good - but then I felt he got a little carried away.

"Would somebody today think of coming up with, you know, the most popular sport, of football?" he asked, adding: "Okay football is hugely popular today but, for a start-up sport, would anyone come up with such an idea, [or of golf or rugby]?"

I won't speak for the other two, but it is hard to conceive of anything more urban than football, or to be precise, the modern-day football pitch.

The sport traces its origins back, yes, to rural England, where rival villages used to wrestle each other to a standstill over stretches of countryside that might include all manner of hedges, brooks, hills and other rustic impediments.

But the formalised, enclosed football pitch as we know it today, and the standard 90-minute duration, is a creature of the mass urbanisation spawned by the industrial revolution.

And the game's popularity was a product, originally, of the regular hours, and therefore leisure-time, that the industrial revolution, for all its horrors, eventually allowed.

Yes, okay, not every city in our crowded world will have limitless pristine 100-metre-by-70-metre grassy swards to set aside for leisure pursuits (not that football has to be played on grass).

And no commercial broadcaster would have "come up with" football because the sport is so fluid it demands 50-minute passages of air-time devoid of advertising breaks.

But generations of inner-city kids from many nations have had little difficulty setting up games on the streets, verges and, in some cases, beaches around their homes.

If worst comes to worst, you make do with a squashed tin can and four jumpers, equipment kids are probably more likely to have to hand than, say, a skateboard.

I have nothing against innovation and can see why broadcasters, who need audiences to justify their hefty rights cheques, might recommend, as Exarchos puts it, "to go for sports from a younger demographic and for those with a more urban feeling".

To repeat, his point about 19th-century Britain is well taken and there are sports on the programme that would struggle to survive, let alone command a global audience, without the sprinkling of magic Olympic dust with which they are anointed once every four years.

But there are one or two other things on this theme I would like to say.

First, we must not reach the point - and I realise this is not what Exarchos was advocating - where the prime aim of an elite, or Olympic, sport is to attract maximum eyeballs to a screen.

If sport is reduced to titillation or spectacle, divorced from the other values that underpinned it, whether in Ancient Greece or Victorian England, you end up at the Colosseum, not Olympia.

In any case, I suspect that made-for-the-medium so-called "reality" shows and artificial video games will nearly always cater for this audience better.

Second, we will not know until we try, but I am far from convinced that changing the nature of the sports content served up under the Olympic label will bring young people flocking back to this sort of mainstream media offering - and it may put some faithful fans off.

Exarchos will know much more about this than me, but I would argue that mainstream broadcasters lost their grip on the youth demographic in large part because TV was not, until recently, an especially interactive medium.

The capacity to chat with friends in real time about what they are watching, preferably away from the parents, is, I observe, a potent lure for the young.

Having been left standing in this market, mainstream, TV-broadcast sport, will have a devil of a job catching up, I fancy, as so much depends on spontaneous, ever-shifting peer-led preferences.

Not only that, but if video clips remain as popular a mode of content consumption as they are today for those who mainly watch via hand-held digital devices, even when young people do turn to sport, it may be only for a minute or two before they move onto the next celebrity sensation or cute puppy or whatever it happens to be.

Lastly, there is a reason why these aged, often Brit-devised, sports have stood the test of time: they are best-of-breed, just like the 19th-century music we continue to listen to and the 19th-century novels we continue to read.

I draw from this observation two tentative conclusions.

1. Embracing new sports - though, again, I recognise it should be tried - is probably going to be higher-risk: the winnowing process performed by history has barely started; there is a good chance some of those embraced will be duds.

2. Just because today's teenagers prefer new-fangled adrenaline sports at this point in their lives, I have yet to be convinced that they will necessarily do so in 10 years' time.

The more traditional sports on the Olympic programme have been captivating 40 year-olds with responsibilities and fairly regimented lifestyles (and often plenty of disposable income) for several generations now.

Even with a cornucopia of earthly delights a proverbial mouse-click away, it may be that the youth of today ultimately conform more closely to the established pattern than it is fashionable to suppose.