BBC and ITV Sport Over The Years

Even though in recent decades the BBC and ITV show coverage of major sporting events, I have read that at one time, until the mid 80s, ITV sport was very different to sport on the BBC. Grandstand apparently wouldn't show certain sports such as darts in the 70s and darts coverage was always shown on ITV - it seems the BBC didn't not choose to show sports that were seen as more "working class". Can other members recall watching World of Sport on ITV? I read on a website some time ago that by the mid 80s World of Sport was often ridiculed as it featured some rather strange sports including clown diving!

Didn't World of Sport also feature a number of American sporting events?

W.O.S got killed off in 1985, BBC won the right to all the good sports

BBC
* Football
* Tennis
* Snooker ( Some of it)
* F1 Racing
* Horse Racing
* Horse Jumping
* Sking
* Rugby
* athletics

ITV: ( had to really look for this list!!! )
* wrestling
* Darts
* women's hockey,
* lacrosse,
* stock car racing, other strange sports

What a lot of people don't remember is that when ITV was getting started the BBC signed quite a lot of long term deals for Sport, especially with Cricket, Rugby and Athletics, this left ITV with very little decent Sport other than Football and Horse Racing, remember in those days the FA weren't keen on League matches being Televised, its only when Match of The Day started on BBC2 in 1964 that Football highlights were a new thing for TV.

Although World Of Sport was often deemed as working class, it did provide viewers with a real alternative and some Sports that wouldn't get shown otherwise, but there were some ludicrous ones such as International clown diving or Double decker Bus racing. ITV axed WoS so money could be freed up to spend on other Sports, hence why around this time ITV got Athletics and in 1988 got exclusive rights to the Football League.

Looking back I do think ITV were right to axe WoS, but it's a shame they never kept On The Ball or a results service, just to bookend a Saturday afternoon.

Apart from an experiment in 1960 league matches were allowed to be shown live from the 1983/4 season, although as now not on Saturday afternoon


They did keep both until the early 2000s (although On The Ball became Saint and Greavsie) - there's little point these days with Soccer Saturday and the BBC's offerings. ITV of course they kept the Wrestling as a stand alone programme for a while after WOS ended

There's an couple of good sites about football on ITV from in the 60's/70's and 80's here: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/ITVfootball68-83.html
http://www.bournagain.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

I would watch International Clown Diving and Double Decker Bus racing now. Did these sports cease to be when the TV money was withdrawn or are they still going on somewhere?

I think ITV probably have the power to make any sport big. They should take advantage of that fact more often, rather than buy the rights to show someone else's league or cup, they should invent their own. They kind of already do it with their big reality shows anyway. They invent a competition (Daning on Ice, X Factor etc.) and people care about it. Why not do that in a slightly more serious way with a minority sport and show it every Wednesday?

When the BBC and ITV shared the Olympic rights back in the eighties (and possibly beforehand) did the coverage complement each other, or would both often show the same event (and ITV probably get thrashed in the ratings)?

Not sure if they complemented each other but remember that in the past there wasn't always continuous live coverage like today. ITV just had a couple of hours a day of 1972's and the coverage of 1980's was cut back on both channel's because of the boycott by the US and others

Googling around it seems that ITV didn't cover 1984 because of an industrial dispute (they were planning extensive coverage but it was all scrapped a few weeks beforehand) and didn't do 1976 either. 1988 was shared between ITV and C4

Are you sure about that? I was under the impression that Tyne Tees and Anglia both had football highlights on a regional basis during the 1962/3 season? Certainly the TTTV operation was mature enough by the late 1960s that George Taylor became the administrator of the ITV setup.

Both Snooker and Darts were ITV-originated originally, the latter being first shown on Westward in 1962.

I certainly don't remember ITV Sport being massively behind the BBC in content terms in the late 70s and early 80s. Yes the Beeb had Rugby and Cricket but these never achieved massive ratings -- they just aren't sports that the casual viewer can get into, Cricket especially.

Tyne Tees and Anglia were the first it seems. Have a look at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/ITV/Shoot.html
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/ITV/Anglia.html

For a few years in the 60s ITV covered Wimbledon along with the BBC. They also did some cricket coverage, I think on a regional basis, including the Roses matches between Lancashire and Yorkshire.

In terms of football, Border used to screen the ABC programme. Then, for many years, they showed the Granada highlights programme. For a few seasons they showed the local Tyne-Tees football show. And they also, inexplicably, screened LWT's Big Match for a year or two. Despite their franchise area encompassing a large area of Southern Scotland, Border never showed Scotsport until the 1980s. Even then it was once a month with an English programme the other three Sundays. Until, that is, the now-scrapped Border Scotland came into operation.

Now viewers in the Border region have, again, no access to Scottish sporting coverage being screened in the rest of Scotland (mainly rugby).

By the way, Grampian screened LWT's Big Match for a season or two in the 70s, I think because the SFA or Scottish League weren't keen for them to show Scotsport.

From your BBC list - ITV had, in those days, plenty of football, more horse racing than the BBC including all 5 flat classics, plus the skiing (from Eurovision, hence available to both channels). At various times they had significant athletics, in those days, as well as the Olympics, the European and World Championships were on both channels, Adrian Metcalf and then Alan Parry being the main ITV commentators. These would all be peak time events. They also had F1 at various times, an early "It will be Alright on the Night" had a major feature on their problems with a link to South Africa, if I remember rightly. They would show one or two Grand Prix live, South Africa and Monaco typically, and the others as highlights. There was also boxing.

It should be remembered that some of the events rise and fall with TV coverage. The women's hockey was a spring international at Wembley, and attracted a live crowd almost filling the stadium most years. With the loss of TV coverage, the interest fell away rapidly and the event stopped completely.

World of Sport had a rigid structure for most of its years:

On the Ball;
International Sports Special 1 - often sports such as skiing in the winter, sometimes the strange US sports when there was little else;
The ITV 7 - 7 races from 2 courses
International Sports Special 2 - more often a UK OB
Half Time football reports
Wrestling
Full Time football reports and results

Meanwhile Grandstand would be more flexible, but would typically include:

Football Focus
Horseracing from one meeting, interlaced with another sport
Rugby - Union for the 5 nations (as was), usually Rugby League at other times in the winter
The football results including the teleprinter

In the summer there would be the sort of events the BBC still show today plus the cricket.

I heard that ITV had horse racing and football in the World of Sport days - I heard that the horse racing in the programme was very popular. I was very surprised to hear about double decker bus racing! And I thought clown diving sounded strange...

I have also read that ITV horse racing in the 70s was quite different to BBC racing - they broadcast from much smaller and more provincial courses and the style of commentary was very different. Did all the 70s and 80s ITV commentators have a different style to those on the BBC?