World of Sport is a British televisionsport programme which ran on ITV between 2 January 1965 and 28 September 1985 in competition with the BBC's Grandstand. Like Grandstand, the programme ran for several hours every Saturday afternoon.
Sport includes all forms of competitive physical activity or games which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants, and in some cases, entertainment for spectators. Hundreds of sports exist, from those between single contestants, through to those with hundreds of simultaneous participants, either in teams or competing as individuals. In certain sports such as racing, many contestants may compete, simultaneously or consecutively, with one winner; in others, the contest is between two sides, each attempting to exceed the other. Some sports allow a "tie" or "draw", in which there is no single winner; others provide tie-breaking methods to ensure one winner and one loser. A number of contests may be arranged in a tournament producing a champion. Many sports leagues make an annual champion by arranging games in a regular sports season, followed in some cases by playoffs.
ITV is a British free-to-air television network with its headquarters in London, it was launched in 1955 as Independent Television under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to BBC Television, that was established in 1932. ITV is also the oldest commercial network in the UK. Since the passing of the Broadcasting Act 1990, its legal name has been Channel 3, to distinguish it from the other analogue channels at the time, namely BBC 1, BBC 2 and Channel 4. In part, the number 3 was assigned because television sets would usually be tuned so that the regional ITV station would be on the third button, with the other stations being allocated to the number within their name.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in Westminster, London, and it is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 20,950 staff in total, 16,672 of whom are in public sector broadcasting. The total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed-contract staff are included.
Eamonn Andrews, was an Irish radio and television presenter, employed primarily in the United Kingdom from the 1950s to the 1980s. From 1960 to 1964 he chaired the Radio Éireann Authority, which oversaw the introduction of a state television service to the Republic of Ireland.
London Weekend Television (LWT) was the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties at weekends, broadcasting from Fridays at 5.15 pm to Monday mornings at 6:00 am. From 1968 until 1992, when LWT's weekday counterpart was Thames Television, there was an on-screen handover to LWT on Friday nights. From 1993 to 2002, when LWT's weekday counterpart was Carlton Television, the transfer usually occurred invisibly during a commercial break as Carlton and LWT shared studio and transmission facilities.
Thames Television was a franchise holder for a region of the British ITV television network serving London and surrounding area on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until the night of 31 December 1992. It continued as an independent production company until 2003.
The programme's title was originally Wide World of Sports (much like the US programme), this was changed after about six weeks because all the initial programmes featured sports from within the UK and early Programme Editor John Bromley felt that "Wide" World of Sports would have looked rather silly.[1]
ABC's Wide World of Sports is an American sports anthology television program that aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) from April 29, 1961 to January 3, 1998, primarily on Saturday afternoons. Hosted by Jim McKay, with a succession of co-hosts beginning in 1987, the title continued to be used for general sports programs on the network until 2006. In 2007, Wide World of Sports was named by Time on its list of the 100 best television programs of all-time.
Features
The show included popular segments such as On the Ball (a preview of the day's football action), the ITV Seven (horse racing), and wrestling with commentator Kent Walton. It also showed sports not seen elsewhere, such as women's hockey, netball, lacrosse, water skiing and stock car racing or sports that were not popular with the British mainstream, such as NASCAR and ice speedway. It featured bizarre sports like the World Barrel Jumping Championships, and even death-defying stunts.
Professional wrestling in the United Kingdom spans over one hundred years but became popular when the then new independent television network ITV began showing it in 1955, firstly on Saturday afternoons and then also in a late-night midweek slot. It was at its peak of popularity when the television show World of Sport was launched in the mid-1960s, making household names out of Adrian Street, Mick McManus, Count Bartelli, Giant Haystacks, Jackie Pallo, Big Daddy, Steve Veidor, Dynamite Kid, and Kendo Nagasaki.
Kent Walton, born Kenneth Walton Beckett, was a British television sports commentator, presenter and actor. He is best remembered as the predominant commentator on ITV's coverage of British professional wrestling from 1955-1988.
Field hockey is a team game of the hockey family. The earliest origins of the game date back to the Middle Ages in Pakistan. The game can be played on grass, water turf, artificial turf or synthetic field as well as an indoor board surface. Each team plays with eleven players, including the goalie. Players use sticks made out of wood, carbon fibre, fibre glass or a combination of carbon fibre and fibre glass in different quantities to hit a round, hard, plastic ball. The length of the stick depends on the player's individual height. Only one face of the stick is allowed to be used. Goalies often have a different kind of stick, however they can also use an ordinary field hockey stick. The specific goal-keeping sticks have another curve at the end of the stick, this is to give them more surface area to save the ball. The uniform consists of shin guards, shoes, shorts, a mouth guard and a jersey. Today, the game is played globally, mainly in parts of Western Europe, South Asia, Southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and parts of the United States. Known simply as "hockey" in many territories, the term "field hockey" is used primarily in Canada and the United States where ice hockey is more popular. In Sweden, the term "landhockey" is used and to some degree also in Norway where it is governed by Norway's Bandy Association.
It often showed show jumping and other equestrian events, especially in its earlier years, and towards the end of its life it showed snooker extensively. 'Minority' sports were a feature throughout its run. The BBC had purchased the rights to as many established events as it could. A joke of the period was that the BBC were going through the list of sports in alphabetical order and had run out of cash before it reached wrestling which is how ITV got it.
Show jumping, also known as "stadium jumping", "open jumping", or simply "jumping", is a part of a group of English riding equestrian events that also includes dressage, eventing, hunters, and equitation. Jumping classes are commonly seen at horse shows throughout the world, including the Olympics. Sometimes shows are limited exclusively to jumpers, sometimes jumper classes are offered in conjunction with other English-style events, and sometimes show jumping is but one division of very large, all-breed competitions that include a very wide variety of disciplines. Jumping classes may be governed by various national horse show sanctioning organizations, such as the United States Equestrian Federation in the USA or the British Showjumping Association in Great Britain. International competitions are governed by the rules of the International Federation for Equestrian Sports.
Equestrianism, more often known as horse riding or horseback riding, refers to the skill and sport of riding, driving, steeplechasing or vaulting with horses. This broad description includes the use of horses for practical working purposes, transportation, recreational activities, artistic or cultural exercises, and competitive sport.
Snooker is a cue sport which originated among British Army officers stationed in India in the later half of the 19th century. It is played on a rectangular table covered with a green cloth, or baize, with pockets at each of the four corners and in the middle of each long side. Using a cue and 21 coloured balls, players must strike the white ball to pot the remaining balls in the correct sequence, accumulating points for each pot. An individual game, or frame, is won by the player scoring the most points. A match is won when a player wins a predetermined number of frames.
Two sports in particular, ten-pin bowling and kart racing, benefited from television exposure to a British public hitherto unaware of them. Whilst the majority of ten-pin bowling shown from 1965 onwards focused on regional league competitions in the UK, a surge in popularity in the sport in the UK in the mid-1970s led to footage from the biennial WTBA World Championship, and telecasts from the US Professional Bowlers Tour, being included increasingly in later years (Mark Roth becoming the first bowler to convert a 7 - 10 split on television on January 5, 1980 at the ARC Alameda Open in Alameda, California, was possibly the best-remembered of the US telecasts shown on the programme). British stock car drivers such as Barry Lee also greatly benefited from the show's exposure.
Ten-pin bowling is a type of bowling in which a bowler rolls a bowling ball down a wood or synthetic lane toward ten pins positioned in a tetractys at the far end of the lane. The objective is to knock down all ten pins on the first roll of the ball, or failing that, on the second roll.
Kart racing or karting is a variant of motorsport road racing with open-wheel, four-wheeled vehicles called known as go-karts or shifter karts. They are usually raced on scaled-down circuits, although some professional kart racing are also raced in full-size motorsport circuits. Karting is commonly perceived as the stepping stone to the higher ranks of motorsports, with former Formula One champions such as Sebastian Vettel, Nico Rosberg, Ayrton Senna, Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher having begun their careers in karting.
The World Tenpin Bowling Championships is a global event that invites all countries that are members of World Bowling to participate.
The programme also occasionally acquired the rights to genuinely major sporting events, such as the Tour de France and the Ryder Cup. Admittedly this was in 1977 when the United States v Great Britain and Ireland match was regarded as something of a mismatch before Europe became the opposition.
During the football season, the programme would normally finish with the Results Service, which began when the full-time whistles started to go in the day's football matches. Bob Colston read the classified results and he was the only regular results announcer throughout the duration of World of Sport (although between 1983 and 1985 Elton Welsby began alternating with Colston).
A typical edition would be broadcast between 12:15 and 17:10 and would take on the following format.[2]
13:00 Sports Special 1 - A wide array of sports, often including clips from US show Wide World of Sports. Less prominent sports such as darts, snooker, bowls, water skiing, speedway, rallying and others would also feature. Sometimes Boxing would also be shown in this slot.
15:45 Half-Time Scores - the half-time scores from that day's football, plus racing results from races that had taken place in the previous hour.
16:00 Wrestling - a mainstay of the World of Sport schedule from 1965 until it ended. Many of the wrestlers featured became household names in the UK and the greatest rivalry was between Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks
16:45 Results Service - all the full-time football scores, match reports and league tables plus the last of the day's horse racing results.
The FA Cup Final also featured on World of Sport - with BBC and ITV often competing for viewers by broadcasting unusual features with early starts to their broadcasts to entice viewers to watch their coverage. The Cup Final was generally the only football match that was shown live on World of Sport.
From the programme's launch until the lifting of restrictions on broadcasting hours in 1972, sports coverage was one of the few programming areas which was exempt from the restrictions. Originally sporting coverage and outside broadcasts were provided with a separate quota of broadcasting hours per year. By the start of World of Sport this amounted to 350 hours per year. This meant World of Sport was a key part of ITV's Saturday schedules, as the five or so hours the programme was on the air did not count to the overall 50 hour a week restriction on normal broadcasting hours.
Demise
After a 20-year run, the programme ended on 28 September 1985 because of a change in emphasis at ITV Sport - racing coverage had switched to Channel 4. Wrestling as a programme continued but it was transmitted on lunchtimes at 12.30 rather than teatimes, which proved terminal for the programme which had a primarily working class audience. Work traditionally finished at half day on a Saturday in the UK which deeply affected its audience as they were now still at work during the broadcast. Greg Dyke, in charge of the scheduling felt that sports such as wrestling and darts were "too working classed"[3]. Football coverage also continued with previous On the Ball hosts Saint and Greavsie and a results service also aired during the football season.
Theme tune and opening
World of Sport had a theme tune and opening credits which featured the ITV Sport logo and the programme name as trailing banners from white Piper Super Cub light aircraft. The long running theme "World Of Sport March", used between 1968 and 1983, was composed by Don Harper, a re-recorded version of the tune was introduced in the early 1980s accompanied by a new title sequence opening with a view of the Earth eclipsing the sun.
The advent of computer-generated imagery saw a new opening title sequence appear in 1983 together with a more contemporary theme tune composed by Jeff Wayne, this lasted until the series ended in 1985.
Wayne also composed a new theme tune for the opening and closing credits to the Results Service during its period as a standalone programme between 1985 and 1992. Previously a simple, 10-second musical and visual sting had been used to introduce the Results Service during the World of Sport programme itself.
The comedian Eric Morecambe appeared as a guest on the Christmas Eve edition of World of Sport in 1977 causing mayhem by entertaining and trying to disrupt his friend Dickie Davies' presentation links.
The show featured rows of typists sat behind the main presenter, mainly preparing items for the show. This was parodied by French and Saunders in the sketch Sports Report and featured their recurring 'Extras' characters attempting to get their faces on television.
Legacy
A spin-off programme Saint and Greavsie, featuring Ian St. John and Jimmy Greaves, featuring football news, action and live chat was introduced by ITV on Saturday lunchtimes from 1985 to replace the On The Ball segment of World of Sport, enjoying a successful run that ended in 1992 when Sky Sports gained exclusive rights to broadcast English top-flight football.
From 1985, Wrestling with Kent Walton would follow immediately after Saint & Greavsie, before being dropped in December 1988, only shortly prior to the popularity of the US World Wrestling Federation promotion (now World Wrestling Entertainment) gaining momentum in the UK in that era via coverage on Sky Television plc from early 1989. During this period, matches from Joint Promotions, who previously held exclusive rights to ITV coverage, were supplemented with matches from rival promotion All Star Wrestling. It was originally planned to bring US wrestling to viewers on average of once a month in this slot - three weeks of the UK version and one of the American version - but the US version only appeared on a total of six occasions in the two years that it played in that slot. Between 1992 and 1995, several ITV regions screened rival US promotion World Championship Wrestling's programme WCW Worldwide in the old Saturday afternoon slot, having previously transmitted the promotion as late night viewing. In the mid 2000s, The Wrestling Channel, later The Fight Network, purchased the broadcasting rights to World of Sport's wrestling shows until the channel stopped transmitting. It was then shown on UK satellite channel Men and Movies.
The Results Service also continued as a standalone programme in its own right, presented generally by Elton Welsby, but was dropped in May 1992. The football results continued to feature on ITV for the next few seasons as part of the Saturday ITN Early Evening News bulletin. David Bobin or Graham Miller presented and did so until both presenters defected to Sky Sports at the end of the 1995/96 season.
Live coverage of sports such as athletics, darts, ice skating and snooker also continued to play a part in the Saturday afternoon schedule on ITV for a time, but gradually diminished after a few years.
ITV paid tribute to World of Sport as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations in September 2005.Various tie-in publications including 'World of Sport ' Annuals and a companion book were published throughout its run.
On 17 October 2016, ITV announced that they would be bringing back professional wrestling, arguably World of Sport's most popular segment. They announced they would be recording a pilot episode on 1 November 2016, being filmed at MediaCityUK in Salford, Greater Manchester. The show featured independent wrestlers such as El Ligero, Grado, and Sha Samuels. ITV also announced that former WWE commentator Jim Ross would call the pilot episode. It aired on New Year's Eve on ITV, where Grado won the World of Sport Championship.[4] The following year on 23 March, Impact Wrestling (formerly known as TNA/Total Nonstop Action Wrestling) announced that they would be teaming with ITV to yet again bring back the show with Jeff Jarrett as an executive producer as a ten episode series. The show was announced to be taping at Preston Guild Hall on 25 May, and 26 May. TNA talents such as Grado and Magnus (in his debut for the series) along with independent wrestlers such as El Ligero, Sha Samuels returning to the series, were confirmed to be part of the series cast.[5] On May 4, 2017 ITV and Impact Wrestling announced that the tapings scheduled for 25 and 26 May at Preston Guild Hall had been postponed indefinitely due to prolonged contract negotiations.[6]
In April 2018 ITV announced World of Sport Wrestling would air a ten-part series later in the year on Saturday afternoons. The shows will be taped in Norwich on 10, 11 and 12 May. [7] Jim Ross will not be involved and neither will Impact Wrestling.
World of Sport Wrestling started airing on 28 July 2018 at 5pm on ITV and is scheduled to run until 29 September 2018. A nine date live tour of the show has been announced for January/February 2019.
Grandstand was a British television sport programme. Broadcast between 1958 and 2007, it was one of the BBC's longest running sports shows, alongside BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
Match of the Day is the BBC's principal football programme. Typically, it is shown on BBC One on Saturday evenings during the English football season, showing highlights of the day's matches in English football's top division, the Premier League.
Robert Jeffrey Stelling is an English sports journalist and sport television presenter. He currently presents Gillette Soccer Saturday for Sky Sports and hosted their coverage of the Champions League between 2011 and 2015.
Adrian Chiles is a British television and radio presenter, currently working for BBC Radio 5 Live.
ITV Racing is a programme produced by ITV Sport for races shown on ITV or ITV4 in the United Kingdom. In its previous incarnation, the show was an essential part of World of Sport.
Peter Brackley was an English football commentator, perhaps most famous for commentating for Football Italia on Channel 4 in the 1990s and formerly commentating for the computer game series Pro Evolution Soccer, up until Pro Evolution Soccer 6, and for Michael Owen's World League Soccer '99.
BBC Sport is a department of the BBC North division providing national sports coverage for BBC Television, radio and online. The BBC holds the television and radio UK broadcasting rights to several sports, broadcasting the sport live or alongside flagship analysis programmes such as Match of the Day, Test Match Special, Ski Sunday, Today at Wimbledon and previously Grandstand. Results, analysis and coverage is also added to the BBC Sport Website and through the BBC Red Button interactive television service.
Channel 4 Racing is the name given to the horse racing coverage on the British television stations Channel 4 and More4.
ITV Sport is a sport producer for ITV. It was formed following the merger between Granada Sport and Central Sport.
Football on 5 is the principal football programme on Channel 5 in the UK. The show first ran from May 1997 until July 2012. The show returned in August 2015 under the name Football League Tonight. For the 2016–17 Football League season the Football on 5 name was revived with the highlights show now called Football on 5: The Championship and Football on 5: Goal Rush being broadcast from 9pm-10.30pm on a Saturday with a repeat on Sunday morning.
ESPN Classic was a British-based European sports television channel which first launched in France in March 2002, followed by Italy in July 2002, and pan-Europe in December 2003. On 13 March 2006 ESPN Classic launched on Sky channel 442 in the UK and Ireland, the first channel in the UK under the ESPN branding. On 3 August 2009, ESPN Classic launched on Virgin Media channel 533 as a part of the XL pack, and in early 2011 video on demand content started to appear on the Virgin Media platform. On 14 August 2009, ESPN Classic launched on UPC Ireland channel 409 as a part of the Max package. It broadcast a range of archive sports coverage, with a large emphasis on football.
The Big Fight Live is a British boxing television programme, broadcast by ITV Sport regularly from 1984-1995 and again from 2005-2010. In 2017, over 30 years after it was first launched, ITV announced that 'The Big Fight Live' would return after it was announced Chris Eubank JR would fight for the world title on ITV Box Office.
Saint and Greavsie was a British television show in which former footballers Ian St John and Jimmy Greaves discussed current football themes such as the day's matches. It ran on ITV from 1985 to 1992.
RTÉ Sport is a department of Irish public broadcaster RTÉ. The department provides sporting coverage through a number of platforms including RTÉ Radio, RTÉ Television, RTÉ.ie, RTÉ Player Sport and RTÉ Mobile. RTÉ holds the television and radio broadcasting rights in the Republic of Ireland to several sports, broadcasting the sport live or alongside flagship analysis programmes such as The Sunday Game, Thank GAA It's Friday, Soccer Republicfor a half an hour and RTÉ Racing on RTÉ Television, and Game On, Saturday Sport, and Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio.
On the Ball is a British ITV Saturday lunchtime television show about football, which ran as part of World of Sport in the 1970s and 1980s, and as a stand-alone show from 1998 to 2004. There was another ITV television show called On the Ball which was a game show hosted by Nick Weir in 1997, shown only in the Granada region.
Sports Stadium was a long-running Irish television sport programme produced by Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). Broadcast between 1973 and 1997, it was the broadcaster's flagship sports programme and one of its longest-running programmes. It ran in a variety of slots, but in its final years aired on RTÉ Two on Saturdays from 1-6pm.
Sky Sports is a group of subscription-television sports channels operated by the satellite pay-TV company Sky, a division of Comcast. Sky Sports is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It has played a major role in the increased commercialisation of British sport since 1991, sometimes playing a large role in inducing organisational changes in the sports it broadcasts, most notably when it encouraged the Premier League to break away from the Football League in 1992.
Results Service was a British television programme that ran from October 1985 until the end of the 1991/92 football season on the ITV network late on Saturday afternoons during the football season.
World of Sport Wrestling is a British professional wrestling television series and occasional promotion. It is promoted as a relaunch of the popular wrestling segment of the World of Sport sports programme which ran on ITV between 2 January 1965 and 28 September 1985. The present programme was launched on New Year's Eve 2016. It was formerly associated with the United States-based promotion, Impact Wrestling. A six date live tour of the show's stars took place in January/February 2019.
References
↑ "The Daily Telegraph: Obituary of John Bromley: Creator of ITV's World of Sport, which ended the BBC's monopoly". The Daily Telegraph. 6 February 2002.
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