Grandstand (TV series)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Grandstand

An early set of programme titles.
Format Sport
Created by Paul Fox
Bryan Cowgill
Presented by Peter Dimmock
David Coleman
Frank Bough
Desmond Lynam
Steve Rider
Country of origin United Kingdom
No. of episodes 3500 (estimated)
Production
Running time various
Broadcast
Original channel BBC1
BBC2 (Sunday Grandstand)
Original run 1958 (1958) – 2007 (2007)

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.

Its first presenter was Peter Dimmock. There were only four main presenters of the programme during its long history: David Coleman (who took over from Dimmock after just three programmes), Frank Bough, Des Lynam, and Steve Rider. Changes in the structure of the programme during its last few years, however, meant it did not have a regular main presenter during this time.

Among the more occasional hosts were Alan Weeks, David Icke, Clare Balding, Hazel Irvine, Bob Wilson, David Vine, Barry Davies, Dougie Donnelly, Harry Carpenter, Harry Gration, John Inverdale, Tony Gubba, Helen Rollason, Ray Stubbs and Sue Barker.

The last editions of Grandstand were broadcast over the weekend of 27–28 January 2007.

Overview

It was created by Paul Fox and Bryan Cowgill and launched on 11 October 1958. The show was one of the most recognisable on British television, dominating Saturday afternoons on the BBC's main channel and covering nearly every major sporting event in Britain such as the FA Cup final, Wimbledon, the Grand National and the University Boat Race, as well as major international events like the Olympic Games, the Commonwealth Games and the FIFA World Cup. A Sunday edition, simply named Sunday Grandstand, launched in 1981 and ran on BBC Two. Until 1997, the Sunday edition was only broadcast during the summer months but from February 1998 Sunday Grandstand aired all year round, incorporating the Ski Sunday and Rugby Special programmes.

Theme tune

The original theme was "News Scoop" by Len Stevens, which was used until 1971. From 1971 to 1975, another, little-remembered tune was used, composed by Barry Stoller who also composed the Match of the Day theme tune). The show's most famous theme, composed especially for the programme by Keith Mansfield, was first heard on 11 October 1975 and remained until the end of the show's run. A re-recorded version of the theme was also introduced in 1999, but complaints caused it to be quickly reverted to the original.[1]

Final Score

In the late afternoon, with many Football League and Scottish Football League matches approaching full-time, the programme would draw to a close with Final Score. This covered not only the results from all the matches, but also gave the results of the football pools. Perhaps the segment's most famous feature is the Vidiprinter, a digital device which printed out the results as they came through, with the characters in each result appearing one by one. Remarkably, only two people regularly read out the classified results on Final Score when it was part of Grandstand: the Australian Len Martin (from the first programme until his death in 1995) and Tim Gudgin (from 1995 until Final Score was separated from Grandstand in 2001 - he continued to read the classified results until 2011).

Competition from ITV

For twenty years (1965 - 1985) Grandstand faced competition from ITV's World of Sport, but by the end of the 1980s ITV had stopped broadcasting Saturday afternoon sport in favour of other programmes.

Later years and demise

In its final few years, the show was rarely presented from a studio and as such there was no longer a main presenter. The show tended to be broadcast from wherever the main event of the day was taking place, and the host would be associated with that feature - for example, if it was snooker then Hazel Irvine would host, if it was racing or rugby league then it would be Clare Balding, and if it was rugby union it would be John Inverdale.

Football Focus and Final Score part company

In August 2001 the Football Focus section, having been the first feature on Grandstand since 1974, separated to become a programme in its own right. This meant that Grandstand's start time was now 1300 rather than 1215.

At the same time, Final Score was also separated from Grandstand, also becoming a programme in its own right,[2] running from 1630 meaning that Grandstand only broadcast between 1300 and 1630 rather than 1215 to 1715. The half time sequence did remain within the Grandstand programme. In 2004, following the success of Sky Sports' Soccer Saturday programme featuring reports from the afternoon's football matches, the BBC introduced its own football scores programme called Score. It ran for the full duration of the afternoon's football matches, beginning at 1430, and was available as an add-on service on the Red Button until 1630 when BBC1 joined the programme and at that point Score would become Final Score.

2006 announcement

On 24 April 2006, the BBC announced that Grandstand would be gradually phased out after nearly half a century[citation needed], due to the increasing use of interactive services and the need to meet the challenges of the digital, on-demand world.[3] This had been hinted by the dropping of the "Grandstand" title from the BBC's coverage of the major international sporting events, like the World Cup as well as that year's Winter Olympics and Commonwealth Games.

It was originally intended that the show's cancellation would take place in 2009; however, with little or no notice, this was brought forward to 28 January 2007.

After Grandstand ended

The final Saturday edition of Grandstand was broadcast on 27 January 2007, and the last edition of all after 48 years was broadcast the following day, 28 January 2007, a short tribute to the history of the show forming its final feature. Sport still features prominently on the BBC's programme schedules on Saturday afternoon as well as on BBC Red Button, the interactive service available on digital television; Final Score is still shown when the football ends on a Saturday evening.[4]

Historic, noteworthy or bizarre live events broadcast

  • Foinavon winning the 1967 Grand National at odds of 100/1 following a 23rd fence pile up in which every other horse fell or was remounted - the fence was subsequently named in Foinavon's honour.
  • Golfer Tony Jacklin hitting the first live televised hole in one in Britain during the 1967 Dunlop Masters.
  • Gareth Edwards scoring one of the most memorable tries in history, in the Barbarians v All Blacks Rugby Union match at Cardiff Arms Park on 27 January 1973.
  • The first known streaker at a major sporting event during an England v France Rugby Union match at Twickenham on 20 April 1974.
  • Cambridge sinking in the 1978 University Boat Race and again in 1984, after colliding with a stationary barge.[citation needed]
  • A fight breaking out on air between staff in the newsroom behind presenter Des Lynam on 1 April 1989. This was later revealed to be an April Fool's Day joke.[5]
  • The Hillsborough football ground disaster on 15 April 1989.
  • Ayrton Senna's fatal accident during the San Marino Grand Prix on 1 May 1994 (Sunday Grandstand).
  • Jockey Frankie Dettori winning all seven races at Ascot on 28 September 1996.
  • One edition in the late 1970s saw the first few minutes of a Frank Bough-presented edition coming from the Multi-Coloured Swap Shop studio. This was because Bough was a guest on Swap Shop that morning and did not have time get to the Grandstand studio.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Grandstand 1999 theme tune remix YouTube
  2. ↑ TV Ark BBC Sport Programmes
  3. ↑ "BBC is to scrap show Grandstand". BBC. 24 April 2006. 
  4. ↑ Roger Mosey on plans after Grandstand
  5. ↑ 12:10 GMT (2013-04-01). "BBC Sport - April Fools: Grandstand's prank from the archives". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2013-11-13. 

Note

  • The term Grandstand also refers to the main seating structure for spectators at a sporting event - after which the programme was named

External links

Video/Audio clips

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.