Nine's Wide World of Sports

Nine's Wide World of Sports

Division of:	Nine Network
Headquarters:	Willoughby, New South Wales
Major Broadcasting Contracts:	NRL State of Origin Rugby League Four Nations NBL The Ashes International cricket in Australia Cricket World Cup Matador BBQ Cup Tour Down Under
Parent:	Nine Entertainment Co.
Sister networks:	9Go! 9Gem
Website:	wwos.com.au

Nine's Wide World of Sports is a long running sports anthology brand on Australian television, aired on the Nine Network. All major sports, events and series covered by the network are broadcast under this brand, the flagship sports being rugby league (National Rugby League), cricket (Australian Summer of Cricket), spring and autumn horse racing, swimming and golf (British Open). Australian rules football was also aired until Nine lost the Australian Football League free-to-air broadcast rights in 2006.

History

Wide World of Sports (WWoS) is a long-used title for Nine's sport programming. All sports broadcasts on Nine air under the WWoS brand. It was also the name of a popular sports magazine program that aired most Saturdays and Sundays. This program filled many of the summer daytime hours. The program premiered at 1:00 pm on Saturday, 23 May 1981, and was initially hosted by Mike Gibson and Ian Chappell, before being hosted in the 1990s by Max Walker and Ken Sutcliffe. Ian Maurice was the regular anchor at the WWOS Update Desk. The show ended in 1999, due in large part to the rise of Fox Sports (which Nine's owner owned half of) and other subscription sport channels., but the show returned in 2008 on Sunday mornings.

From the late 1970s, the main sport aired nationally under the WWoS brand was cricket. Nine's majority owner Kerry Packer created World Series Cricket in part because he couldn't obtain the rights to Australian test matches at home, even though he offered the Australian Cricket Board a $1.5 million 3-year contract which was rejected by the ACB who signed a 3-year deal with the ABC to broadcast test matches. This led to Packer signing in secret some of the world's best cricket players for a breakaway competition. The ACB and Nine then signed a truce after a long dispute in 1979, with Nine securing the exclusive rights to telecast Australian cricket.

From that point until 2006, Nine based its summer schedule around broadcasts of cricket internationally and domestic. Its cricket broadcasts in that era revolutionised the way the sport was covered, featuring cameras placed at both ends of the field (after Packer famously complained about seeing "cricketer's bums" every second over), instant replays, and other innovations. World Series Cricket made many other changes to cricket, having a huge impact on the game.

In 1984, Billy Birmingham (The Twelfth Man) released a best-selling comedy album making fun of the cricket portion of the show. He went on to release a series of albums ridiculing all aspects of Wide World of Sports, calling the show "Wired World of Sports". From the first to the most recent (2006), all have reached number one on the Australian album chart.

January 1995 saw the beginning of Premier Sports Network, the channel that was to become Fox Sports. It secured the rights to Australia's cricket tour of the West Indies, Nine's first challenge since winning its World Series war. Nine tried to stop the broadcast under Australia's 'anti-siphoning' rules, which exist to stop certain popular sporting events being screened exclusively on pay television. But it failed when Premier Sports Network came to an agreement to broadcast the tour free to air on Network 10.

WWoS's other main sport was and is rugby league. This was challenged in 1997 by the establishment of Super League, the repercussions of which led to Nine's parent company owning half of Fox Sports that year, and ultimately Nine's move away from popular live sport.

This partial purchase of Fox Sports roughly coincided with the end of Nine's traditional Saturday and Sunday daytime schedule of sports programming. What had once filled it now filled subscription channels, mainly Fox Sports. Old movies and other low rating programs filled much of the space.

Between the late 1970s and 1997, when Australians had wanted to watch continuous sport at home on a summer weekend, they had largely done so by tuning to Nine. Those in NSW, Queensland and the ACT did this all year round, due to rugby league's popularity in those areas. Now Fox Sports had that mantle, and gave viewers continuous sport all week long.

On 25 January 2001, The Nine Network acquired broadcast rights for Friday night and Sunday games in the Australian Football League, the elite Australian rules football competition in 2001. They shared the rights with Network Ten and Foxtel from 2002 through to 2006, but the deal assigned the rights for finals matches to Network Ten, a deal which reportedly flabbergasted Nine boss Kerry Packer.

As it also had the rights for all major swimming competitions until 2008, with major swimming competitions shown in primetime. During the early to mid-2000s, Nine for the first time had the FTA rights to the highest competitions of Australia's four biggest spectator sports: rugby league, Australian rules (shared with Ten), cricket and swimming. While Nine no longer had the volume of sport it once had, during the 2000-2006 period it dominated non-Olympic sport broadcasting in Australia.

In January 2006, the Seven Network and Network Ten exercised their "first and last" rights agreement with the AFL to trump the Nine Network's $780 million bid for broadcasting rights for the years 2007 to 2011. If Seven and Ten were unable to match the AFL's "quality of coverage" demands by 5 May 2006 (better coverage into regional areas, northern states and on pay television, as promised in the Nine bid) the AFL would have been allowed to award the broadcasting rights back to Nine. The Seven/Ten consortium, however, obtained the rights, with Nine broadcasting its last AFL match on a Sunday hosted by Tony Jones with a guest appearance from Nine's then chief executive and former AFL commentator Eddie McGuire.

From the beginning of the 2006-2007 cricket season, Nine no longer broadcast Australian domestic cricket but replaced the coverage with ldelayed National Basketball League matches. The domestic cricket matches, long a mainstay of Nine's summer programming, moved exclusively to Fox Sports.

It was thought that the Seven Network would continue its tradition of airing the Olympic Games for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. However, Nine in joint partnership with Foxtel, has secured broadcasting rights which the network has described as the most comprehensive coverage of the Olympics. The partnership also won the rights to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

For more than 40 years, the Nine Network had also broadcast the prestigious Wimbledon tennis tournament before ultimately dropping it after the 2010 tournament, citing declining ratings.^[1] The last Wimbledon match televised by Nine was the men's singles final played between Rafael Nadal and Tomáš Berdych, which Nadal won. The Seven Network have since picked up the broadcasting rights to Wimbledon, from 2011 onwards.^[2]

Return

After a ten-year hiatus, it was announced that the 'Wide World of Sports' program would return to Nine on 16 March 2008.^[3] This show is hosted by the previous host Ken Sutcliffe, with footy show star James Brayshaw as well as former Australian cricketer Adam Gilchrist.

In 2009, revolving co-hosts included former swimmers Giaan Rooney, Nicole Livingstone and former cricketer Michael Slater. The show originally aired for 90 minutes but was recently extended to two hours. It airs on Sunday mornings at 9am till 11am.

Wide World of Sports returned for another year in 2009. Michael Slater and Grant Hackett joined the team as co-hosts alongside Ken Sutcliffe and Giaan Rooney. Nicole Livingstone did not return to the program in 2009, as she joined Network Ten as a commentator. Giaan Rooney resigned from the Nine Network at the end of 2012 to join the Seven Network.

The show was nominated for the Most Popular Sports Program award at the 2009, 2010, 2013, 2014 and 2015 Logie Awards, being beaten by The NRL Footy Show on all occasions.

The show is currently airing in 2015 at 10AM Sundays.

Events

Nine's Wide World of Sports holds broadcast rights to the following events:

Current

Past

¹ The Nine Network televised the 2011 US Open final between Serena Williams and Samantha Stosur in its entirety.^[4]

Programs

Nine's Wide World of Sports has presented the following recurring programs:

Presenters and commentators

Nine's Wide World of Sports has hosts and commentators for a variety of sporting events. The following is a list of past and present personalities featured:

Nine's Wide World of Sports (1980s through 1997 and 2008–present)

Current

• Ken Sutcliffe, chief host (1990s–present)
• Michael Slater (2009–present)
• Sally Fitzgibbons (2013–present)
• James Brayshaw (2008–present)
• Grant Hackett (2008–present)

Former

Any Given Sunday

• James Brayshaw (2005)
• Nicole Livingstone (2006)
• Garry Lyon (2005)
• Mick Molloy (2006)
• Sam Newman (2005)

2012 London Olympics

Various Nine programs including Today, Mornings, Millionaire Hot Seat, The Footy Show, 60 Minutes and Australia's Funniest Home Videos go on hiatus during Nine's broadcast of the 2012 London Olympics. A daily two hour highlights package London Gold aired at 9am weekdays following the live overnight coverage.

National Rugby League

Current

Qld Cup

• Scott Sattler (2012–present; commentator)

The NRL Footy Show

The Sunday NRL Footy Show

Former

Cricket

Current

Past

Guest international commentators

National Basketball League

• Bill Baxter (Host, 2015-)
• Brad Rosen (Expert Analysis, 2015-)

Tour Down Under Cycling

• Tim Gilbert (Host, 2012-)
• John Steffensen (Co-Host, 2016-)
• Phil Liggett (Commentator, 2012-)
• Paul Sherwen (Commentator, 2012-)
• Robbie McEwen (Commentator, 2012-)

2015 Rugby World Cup

• Ken Sutcliffe (Host)
• Cameron Williams (Host)
• Bill Baxter (Host)
• Brendan Cannon (Expert Analysis)
• Benn Robinson (Expert Analysis)
• Phil Waugh (Live Ground Reports & Expert Analysis)
• Nathan Sharpe (Live Ground Reports & Expert Analysis)

Australian Football League

The Footy Show (Sunday edition) panellists

• Max Walker, original host
• Mal Brown
• Billy Brownless
• Doug Hawkins
• Sam Kekovich
• Simon O'Donnell (2000)
• Lou Richards (1993–2008)
• Ted Whitten (1993–1995)

See also

• ABC Sport
• Seven Sport
• Ten Sport
• SBS Sport
• List of Australian television series
• List of longest running Australian television series
• Sports broadcasting contracts in Australia

References

External links

• Official website
• Wide World of Sports entry at IMDB