Scorebars / scoreboard OSGs - history, firsts and lasts

A few factors at play - a relatively small number of OB trucks work into the channel, and a team from the graphics provider (Moov) are based in the building so it's quite easy to source new stuff. Occasionally an old score bug will pop up on some archive footage, and despite looking fine at the time, now looks really dated!

From the same YouTube channel...

Here's BBC One carrying an on-screen scoreboard in 1991 . But maybe not one that they chose or wanted!

This was only used during "brief highlights" introduced by Steve Rider.

BBC Sportsnight - Kingston BC v FC Barcelona, 30.01.1991



The Genome entry for the show confirms that this was played the same night.

These graphics have a lot in common with Channel 4's previous ones. The scorebar is just a clock, team colours and scores without names. The graphic is main-camera only, not appearing on replays or the other cameras.

The graphics and camerawork don't look very "BBC" to me – the style and fonts, the replay wipes, even the crash-zoom when a shot hits the basket. It makes me wonder if the Beeb just purchased this coverage and someone else made it. But who? Maybe another broadcaster, maybe the organizers FIBA, maybe Kingston hired a production company? (It was held at Crystal Palace.)

The tournament is the European Champions Cup 1990/91 – details here. Kingston were eliminated early, but Genome says BBC covered a few games including Barcelona above. We have extended video highlights of the match a week later, against Aris of Greece, apparently added to Grandstand at short notice. This time, no continuous scoreboard. And lots of Greek supporters and Kevin Cadle getting very excited.

Kingston v Aris Thessaloniki, 07.02.1991, shown 09.02.1991


BBC TV had shown basketball as early as 1949, and broadcast a lot of it through the '80s. They rarely covered European club tournaments, in 1985 and again in 1991 because Kingston made Europe's final 8. As an example of how they probably "preferred" their graphics to look, this is from their coverage of the national league Sunderland v Thames Valley highlights (from Grandstand 13.04.1991). A few score updates, every couple of hours You don't want to give people too much information.




Not on BBC, but from the final of that Euro Champions Cup tournament, some clips contain a scorebar - only the team colours and scores plus the FIBA logo.

Barcelona v Jugoplastika (KK Split), played 18.04.1991


No reason why FIBA couldn't have done that at the time, but I think this scoreboard was added years later, the way ESPN Classic does. It looks a bit too good for 1991, and doesn't fit with the other graphics on the game clips. And the VHS off-airs of the national TV coverage don't contain it.


There's an early (and remarkably low-quality) "score in the corner" in this clip from 1985. But again, it wasn't shown during most of the coverage. It's from the end of the basketball Cup Winners' Cup final:

Barcelona v Zalgiris, 19.03.1985



They call a digital onscreen graphic a " DOG"... So, if it's superimposed Monty Python-style, is it an analogue graphic? An AOG?

This graphic isn't in other clips from the game, because the director was too busy annoying everyone with the TVE logo.

I like this one - Manchester United vs Barcelona in the Cup Winners' Cup... of basketball.
http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/018cff9236104c658e583af4b039fb54

They often use the example of the Beeb showing NBA Basketball in the late eighties as an example of how football was in such decline that they'd rather show basketball on a Saturday night, although as you can see it didn't start until May so it wasn't either/or. That first series was repeated over Christmas in 1987 on daytime BBC2, making NBA Basketball one of the few sporting events to be shown on all five terrestrial channels (along with the Superbowl, test match cricket and the Uefa Cup).



Yeah, probably. When C4 scaled down their coverage of British basketball in the mid-eighties, they carried on doing the Cup but the clubs had to pay for the cost of televising it themselves, so presumably that was how it ended up on Sportsnight, the organisers probably offered it to anyone who wanted it.

It's interesting you should mention the style of the coverage, because I was going to mention those grabs you posted from C4, because they look a bit odd from a modern perspective because they seem so zoomed in. I know they're in 4:3 but there does seem to have been a change in how sport has been filmed in the past 25 years or so.

On an old Betamax tape I acquired several years ago there was a news bulletin from 1990 which included news of the (as was) Five Nations and included clips of matches in Scotland and France, and when they went between the two the difference in direction seemed very obvious. The Scotland match, obviously filmed by the Beeb, had all the action very close up, you had no real idea where they were on the pitch, whereas the France match, presumably filmed by French telly, was filmed in a much wider shot so you could see much more of the pitch and the stadium. It looked far more like the coverage we get now, so it seems that since the turn of the nineties, British TV has taken on the example of French TV and films everything from a wider angle.

Of course, at the time we just accepted that was how things were filmed, but it seems very odd to see the two different styles right next to each other. Feels a bit like going from VT to film.

That would be great, if you wanted to. Sometime I'll try to find the first "Fox Box".

Here's a riddle, what on earth is going on in this framegrab?

http://uploads.cuttlefishtech.com/gfx/new-nbcsn/1417836164305.jpg

(Not sure, but I think I've worked it out.)

Michigan are at home, playing an ice hockey game against Ohio State.
The score at that point in the game is 4 goals to 2 in favour of Michigan.
They are in the 2nd period of play (of 3) and there are 8 minutes and 17 seconds left in the period.
Michigan have a Power Play which means they have one more player on the ice than Ohio.
There are 34 seconds left of the Power Play after which the Ohio player comes out of the penalty box and back into the game (like a SIn bin).
The lower 3rd indicates that this is an in-play highlight from the Big Ten Network (Big Ten being the league they're playing in) and the NCAA just means its a college game.
The game is currently at 1 minute to go in the 2nd period.
The only bit perplexing me is the bracketed numbers at the bottom of the lower 3rd - at face value it appears that Ohio State have played 14 games, winning 5, losing 8 and drawing 1, yet Michigan have only played 3 games, winning 1, losing 2 and drawing 0, which doesn't really make sense.
At the bottom is a latest score from a basketball game in the NBA - the Oklahoma City Thunder have 72 points, the Philadelphia 76ers have 57 points.
The game is in the 3rd quarter with 5 minutes 47 seconds to go.
The highlight is being shown on a programme on NBC Sports and sponsored by US Bank.

(7-2 mate, but good work!)

The Fox Box is awesome. As is the glow puck!

Edit: You sneaky sod!

The NCAA/BTN is actually a copyright text so it will list the league and network/owner of the broadcast.

That's definitely the games played by the way in the brackets. But yes, it does seem odd.

Last thing: The BTN graphics look very Fox so I looked it up and yep, part venture with the Big Ten Conference.

It's Schrodinger's Score - it's both 4-2 and 7-2 at the same time. At the point in the VT it is 4-2, but the lower third shows that at the point in time it is 7-2

How did I miss that, I'm a seasoned viewer

Thanks for the fantastic explanation, MY83! I guessed the screenshot was from a news clip, but didn't realize it had graphics from two different networks.

Why anybody would name their ice hockey team the "76ers"... It's like they wanted to turn every scoreline into East Fife 5 Forfar 4.





^ Cleverest score-related comment ever. Scoreboard discussion is all downhill from here.