ITV & the Olympics

ET

ethanh05 6 October 2020 7:38pm

Here's a clip of ITV/Channel 4's Olympic coverage from 1988. It seems to be coverage of the Opening Ceremony, without actually showing much of the ceremony itself!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugy6IJoJx4Q

Typical ITV reliance on human interest stories and relatives of the athletes.

Well it's not showing any of the ceremony considering it's copyright blocked...

EDIT: Oh wait, no it isn't.

Last edited by ethanh05 on 7 October 2020 7:46am

SW

Steve Williams 6 October 2020 8:32pm

tightrope78 posted:

Here's a clip of ITV/Channel 4's Olympic coverage from 1988. It seems to be coverage of the Opening Ceremony, without actually showing much of the ceremony itself!

I had much of the ITV/C4 coverage of the Opening Ceremony on an old tape I inherited, years ago now. It goes on for ages, because they started the coverage long before the ceremony, a good hour or so before, so they could preview the games and introduce all their personnel. Then the BBC came on about five minutes before it started and they cleaned up. They did show most of the ceremony, with Alan Parry commentating, seemingly they ducked out of some of the athletes parade near the end (as C4 do now in the Paralympics). They had plenty of big names in the studio as well.

One of the other things on that programme was Simon May playing the theme tune live in the studio, explaining how the idea was for something like "Far-EastEnders", which made Duncan Goodhew absolutely piss himself laughing.

TI

tightrope78 6 October 2020 10:03pm

Steve Williams posted:

tightrope78 posted:

Here's a clip of ITV/Channel 4's Olympic coverage from 1988. It seems to be coverage of the Opening Ceremony, without actually showing much of the ceremony itself!

I had much of the ITV/C4 coverage of the Opening Ceremony on an old tape I inherited, years ago now. It goes on for ages, because they started the coverage long before the ceremony, a good hour or so before, so they could preview the games and introduce all their personnel. Then the BBC came on about five minutes before it started and they cleaned up. They did show most of the ceremony, with Alan Parry commentating, seemingly they ducked out of some of the athletes parade near the end (as C4 do now in the Paralympics). They had plenty of big names in the studio as well.

I remember sitting up to watch this Opening Ceremony (I was 10 years old). I remember we watched the build up on ITV and then switched over to the BBC as soon as they started. That was the first showing of the BBC Sport globe also! The BBC had Dan Maskell in the stadium, attending his first Olympic Games aged 80. These were the first Olympics that included tennis as a full medal sport.

The Simon May ITV Olympic theme is pretty great though!

(September 2020)