Shows that people forget or get lost in time

When I had a VCR, I had some editions of Oddballs, and Aunties Sporting Bloomers, on tape. The opening titles to the latter had the 1960s Grandstand theme, and a similar shot of a 4 lens camera, but with sporting cock ups. At the end the normal camera zoomed out, and it was Terry Wogan operating the vintage camera!

Who also remembers a show on STV from 1993, shown on a Saturday teatime, called "The Box"? Not a music show, but a sort of right to reply show and preview of shows coming up on STV.

Could it have been Richard Orford?

Somebody mentioned SportsNight earlier on, a couple of sports programmes that I think have been pretty much forgotten.

Sports Afternoon , which later became Sport On Friday, originally was a Wednesday afternoon programme. The music gained a life of its own outside of the programme, as BBC local radio stations would often use the theme as a sports news bed.

NightSports was a shortlived overnight sports programme on Channel 4. May have run for about a week or so, or maybe 6 weekly editions, something like that. If memory serves it was an early 1990s programme.

Live & Dangerous was a sports talk programme that went out late nights on channel 5, on Monday night, Tuesday night and Thursday night, Sunday & Wednesday nights being the live Major League Baseball coverage. Pre-taped sports programming would follow that to make a full night of sports until about 5am or so.

Doesn't sound like him to me. Someone once suggested John Sachs, but I am convinced it's him introducing himself.

That was me.



And like Sportsnight, SOF ended in 1997.

It's probably even more forgotten than the show itself that it aired on Wednesdays during its first year (with that different name, obviously), and that David Icke was the first host. Helen Rollason only took over in 1990, having sat in for David on a number of editions before her landmark Grandstand appearance.

Disappointingly, there are few clips of SOF on YouTube. Among them, though, is the end of the edition of 20 September 1991, with Helen cheerfully telling us that she'll be back later that day with athletics coverage. And yes, that theme tune was brilliant.



It's been asked many times before, of course, but where would Helen be now if she were still with us?

That theme tune is called "Hitting Home" by John Deveraux.

I remember a couple of programmes shown only on STV. One was a kind of ethnic or religious show, called Eikon. Lasted a few series late 80s early 90s. Another more forgotten show was Easy. It was shown on a Sunday lunchtime in the 1980s. Only one series was made AFAIK. It basically was a show telling you how to deal with situations, without getting stressed, hence the title, "easy"

Sunday mornings on ITV had a regular disabled show, "Link". Ended in, I think, late 1990s. Was made by Central, then Carlton.

Eikon last until after 2000. It ticked alot of boxes for stv and would often replace sunday service.

'Easy' was actually networked - certainly the name immediately springs to mind from one of our London-region TV Times which didn't end up lining our rabbit cage, and searching the Times listings for that date (26 July 1987) there it is at 12.30 pm everywhere - "giving and receiving feedback". So not an STV-only thing as suggested, assuming it's the same programme (and I can vaguely recall "Scottish Television Production" below it).

Link went on and on and on, even back to the days of ATV. The last programme was on 3rd January 1999, a week after the regular Morning Worship ceased. Remarkable that it even survived that long really.

Sport on Friday was rather a weird thing, wasn't it? Sometimes featured racing, from late in the Flat season and then the jump season, but the extent of the latter was reduced in the last couple of years after Channel 4 won the Cheltenham contract. I can remember watching bobsleigh on one of the very last editions. Sportsnight clearly *isn't* forgotten, the theme tune is still very well remembered.

Under the Moon, as previously mentioned in this thread, sticks in my mind for one thing and one thing alone: when Bedlington Terriers (which is actually the name of that town's team) scored four goals to knock Colchester out of the FA Cup (one of those instances of former giant-killers being, in relative terms, giant-killed themselves) and they had four Bedlington Terriers (the dogs) in the studio.

I think Nation277 was just a year or two ahead of its time. Friendly was just a waste of space.

I wonder if those sort of shows would be more viable now we have product placement.

Wasn't Friendly TV the channel who thought they'd cut away to an advert break, but left the sound on in the studio and broadcast some libellous comments about some celebrities?

Yes it was!

https://youtu.be/zFmwgXG4kSU
[[Changed from embedded clip to link by mod due to YouTube uploaded clearly being an ex-TVF member. They've altered the thumbnail pics generated for these videos to messages aimed at existing TVF users.]]