Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

I'm not sure myself, a lot of early 1980s clips show ITV Sport as ITV Sport, or ITV Sport Presents... only from when WoS was axed that they introduced an ITV Sport frontcap. I guess ITV Sport operated no differently than how ITN used to when it was owned by all ITV companies, ie before 1993.

Although 1993 was when it really changed, as ISN was formed, and I guess it had something to do with LNN didn't it? But I also recall that later on during the 1990s most ITV Sport productions were credited to ISN and Central...

It's interesting stuff when you really look into it.

ITV Sport was only a brand in the 1980s. For example the football highlights programmes were administered for a long time by Tyne Tees (oddly enough); George Taylor (presenter at TTT and head of the sports department) would chair a conference call each week to decide what went out, and who had the best highlights etc. The whole thing was a pooling of effort, with no one company dominating proceedings.

As I said a couple of pages back, the World of Sport entry in TVTimes used to end Compiled for Independent Television by London Weekend Television in the 1970s and early 1980s. Indeed, here's a 1985 example I've just found. As I guessed, and someone since confirmed, Dickie was in a LWT studio, but other ITV companies in the relevant areas provided OB footage of sports fixtures featured in the programme. However there was no LWT ident at the start or LWT endcap at the end unlike, for example, Weekend World, Play Your Cards Right.

ITV Sport, with its " S " logo was a mechanism for enabling ITV contractors to present unified national sports coverage, in effect removing competition between ITV companies whilst allowing regions to share a common sports budget. It didn't have its own facilities and was only really a forum.

In many respects the role of the presenter on World of Sport was very similar to that of an in vision continuity announcer for much of the afternoon, linking in and out of bits made by the various regions, until the results sequence when the role changed to that of a regular presenter.

I believe Yorkshire Television were responsible for all racing coverage in the north of England with Thames Television responsible for the south. I seem to remember reading that Yorkshire were also responsible for all golf coverage on ITV.

Anglia certainly looked after Newmarket, requiring 4 of their 6 trucks.

Also their capgen truck was used across the country for the racing coverage, and even went over to France a few times, working into other companies trucks (it then went on to be the racing capgen truck when all the trucks were sold to Global Widescreen and eventually Visions, and was still on the road until around 2004, the links truck was also ex-Anglia until the engine blew up, the replacement still has some ex-Anglia asseted monitors). I seem to remember being told many years ago it was the largest mobile graphics vehicle in the country, with almost everyone else working into graphics facilities at their bases rather than taking the kit to the locations - don't know how accurate that was.

Yes, they had a common production team which did appear to originate at Yorkshire although obviously they'd use resources from whichever ITV region they were in. And it was presented by Anglia's Steve Rider. It was very much like how Get Fresh, Ghost Train and Highway had a central production team at Tyne Tees co-ordinating the rota, looking after the regular weekly aspects and managing the post, but each individual show was made by the individual ITV regions.

LWT was usually responsible for network football coverage, such as the 1990 World Cup - I have a clip of Goal Of The Tournament where you can either phone or write to London Weekend Television, London SE99 - but I think they lost the contract in 1993 as after that it was produced by Central and Grand Slam Sports, and the likes of Saint and Greavsie were dropped, replaced by the hapless Matthew Lorenzo. Meanwhile the Grand Prix coverage was produced by MACh 1 - ie, Meridian Anglia Chrysalis.

When the racing moved to Channel Four, it was a Three On Four Production, which was a co-operation between Yorkshire, Anglia and Thames.

Yes, LWT also produced the 1980 Moscow Olympics coverage , and I think would have done the '84 LA games, had the industrial dispute not blacked out the planned coverage.

I think Thames handled the 1988 Seoul Olympics, which was mainly through the night on C4 ?

I think it was Thames who should have produced the 84 Olympics if they had gone ahead on ITV/C4, there's an article somewhere on Transdiffusion I think that says basically the main reason why ITV didn't show the 84 games was that Thames had a lot of trouble with the Unions back in the Summer of 1984. TV-am should have also played a part, but apparently they dropped out as they couldn't afford it.

Did the bbc show the 84 games?

Yep and they heavily promoted it too, it was the first time the Olympic logo made it onto the BBC1 ident, and probably to rub it in at TV-am they had Olympic Breakfast Time.