World of Sport is a
British televisionBritish television broadcasting started in 1936, and now has a collection of free and subscription services over a variety of distribution media, through which there are up to 600 channels for consumers as well as on-demand content. There are six main channel owners who are responsible for most...
sportSport is an activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively. Sports commonly refer to activities where the physical capabilities of the competitor are the sole or primary determinant of the outcome , but the term is also used to include activities such as...
anthology programme which ran on
ITVITV is a public service network of British commercial television broadcasters, set up under the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC. ITV is the oldest commercial television network in the UK...
between January 2, 1965 to September 28, 1985 in response to competition from
BBC's GrandstandGrandstand is a British television sport programme. Broadcast between 1958 and 2007, it is one of the BBC's longest running sports shows, alongside BBC Sports Personality of the Year.Its first presenter was Peter Dimmock...
. Like Grandstand, the programme ran for several hours every Saturday afternoon.
Eamonn AndrewsEamonn Andrews, CBE was an Irish television presenter based in the United Kingdom.Andrews was born in Synge Street, Dublin, Ireland, the same street as playwright George Bernard Shaw. He was educated at the local school, Synge Street CBS. He began his career as an amateur boxer and went on to be...
was the first host and the programme itself was "compiled for Independent Television" by
ABCAssociated British Corporation was one of a number of commercial television companies established during the 1950s by cinema chain companies in an attempt to safeguard their business by becoming involved with television which was taking away their cinema audiences.In this case, the parent company...
. From the summer of 1968 it was produced by
London Weekend TelevisionLondon Weekend Television is the ITV network franchise holder for London and the South East at weekends, broadcasting from Fridays at 5:15pm. to Monday mornings at 5:59am....
- under the ITV Sport banner, with the other ITV stations supplying footage of events in their regions.
World of Sport is a
British televisionBritish television broadcasting started in 1936, and now has a collection of free and subscription services over a variety of distribution media, through which there are up to 600 channels for consumers as well as on-demand content. There are six main channel owners who are responsible for most...
sportSport is an activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively. Sports commonly refer to activities where the physical capabilities of the competitor are the sole or primary determinant of the outcome , but the term is also used to include activities such as...
anthology programme which ran on
ITVITV is a public service network of British commercial television broadcasters, set up under the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC. ITV is the oldest commercial television network in the UK...
between January 2, 1965 to September 28, 1985 in response to competition from
BBC's GrandstandGrandstand is a British television sport programme. Broadcast between 1958 and 2007, it is one of the BBC's longest running sports shows, alongside BBC Sports Personality of the Year.Its first presenter was Peter Dimmock...
. Like Grandstand, the programme ran for several hours every Saturday afternoon.
Early years
Eamonn AndrewsEamonn Andrews, CBE was an Irish television presenter based in the United Kingdom.Andrews was born in Synge Street, Dublin, Ireland, the same street as playwright George Bernard Shaw. He was educated at the local school, Synge Street CBS. He began his career as an amateur boxer and went on to be...
was the first host and the programme itself was "compiled for Independent Television" by
ABCAssociated British Corporation was one of a number of commercial television companies established during the 1950s by cinema chain companies in an attempt to safeguard their business by becoming involved with television which was taking away their cinema audiences.In this case, the parent company...
. From the summer of 1968 it was produced by
London Weekend TelevisionLondon Weekend Television is the ITV network franchise holder for London and the South East at weekends, broadcasting from Fridays at 5:15pm. to Monday mornings at 5:59am....
- under the ITV Sport banner, with the other ITV stations supplying footage of events in their regions.
Thames TelevisionThames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992. It was both a broadcaster and a producer of television programmes, making shows both for the local region it covered...
took over LWT's responsibilities for
Bank HolidayA bank holiday is a public holiday in both the United Kingdom and Ireland. There is some automatic right to time off on these days, although the majority of the population not employed in essential services A bank holiday is a public holiday in both the United Kingdom and Ireland. There is some...
editions.
Dickie DaviesRichard "Dickie" Davies is a British television presenter, best known for presenting World of Sport from 1968 until 1985....
also took over as host in 1968 and would remain the face of the show until it ended in 1985. Other presenters were
Fred DinenageFred Edgar Dinenage is an English television host and newsreader, based in the south of England.Dinenage has appeared as presenter of many British television programmes , such as Gambit , Tell The Truth, How, and its successor How...
&
Jim RosenthalJames "Jim" Rosenthal is a sports presenter on British television.As a child he grew up in Oxford and attended Josca's Preparatory School before going to Magdalen College School. Rosenthal has always been a loyal supporter of his childhood home team of Oxford United.His apprenticeship was served...
.
The programme's title is similar to
Wide World of SportsABC's Wide World of Sports is a sports anthology series on American television that ran from 1961 to 1998 and was originally hosted by Jim McKay. The title continued to be used for general sports programs regularly until 2006, and still is occasionally used today...
. The proposed title was changed because the initial programmes featured sports from hardly further than the North Circular, and early Programme Editor John Bromley felt that "Wide" World of Sports would have looked rather silly.
Features
The show included popular segments such as
On the BallOn The Ball was a British ITV Saturday lunchtime television show about football, which ran as part of World of Sport in the 1980s, and as a stand-alone show from 1998 to 2004....
(a preview of the day's football action),
The ITV SevenThe ITV Seven was an essential part of World of Sport in the United Kingdom. It started on 4 October 1969 when the programme began to show horse racing from two courses each week rather than one, under the title "They're Off". In the early 1970s it changed to the ITV Seven, reflecting the number...
(horse racing), and
wrestlingProfessional wrestling in the United Kingdom spans over 100 years but became popular when the television show World of Sport was launched in the mid-1960s, making household names out of Mick McManus, Count Bartelli, Giant Haystacks, Jackie Pallo, Big Daddy, Steve Veidor, and Kendo Nagasaki...
with commentator
Kent WaltonKent Walton , born Kenneth Walton Beckett, was a British television sports commentator and presenter.Despite a transatlantic accent which led many to believe he was Canadian, he was born in Cairo, Egypt, the son of the finance minister in the colonial government...
. It also showed sports not seen elsewhere, such as women's
hockeyField hockey is a team sport in which a team of players attempt to score goals by hitting, pushing or flicking the ball with hockey sticks into the opposing team's goal. Its official name is simply hockey, and this is the common name for it in many countries...
,
netballNetball is a sport in which two teams of seven players try to score points against each other by placing a ball through a raised goal. The sport is popular in Commonwealth countries and is predominantly played by women. Netball shares many similarities with basketball, having been derived from...
,
lacrosseLacrosse is a team sport of Native American origin that is played using a small solid rubber ball and a long-handled racquet called a crosse or lacrosse stick. The head of the lacrosse stick is strung with loose netting that is designed to hold the lacrosse ball...
,
water skiingthumb|left|Slalom skierWaterskiing is a sport where an individual is pulled behind a motor boat or a cable ski installation on a body of water. The skier is either wearing one or two skis...
and
stock car racingStock car racing is a form of automobile racing found mainly in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain and Brazil. Traditionally, races are run on oval tracks measuring approximately ¼ mile to 2.66 miles in length, but are also raced on road courses...
or sports that were not popular with the British mainstream, such as
NASCARThe National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing is a family-owned and operated business venture that sanctions and governs multiple auto racing sports events. It was founded by Bill France Sr. in 1947-48. As of 2009, the CEO for the company is Brian France, grandson of the late Bill France Sr...
and
ice speedwayIce Speedway is a developed form of Speedway racing, featuring racing on frozen surfaces. The sport uses bikes enhanced for the terrain. Participants can compete at international level.- Outline :...
. It featured bizarre sports like the World Barrel Jumping Championships, and even death-defying stunts.
It often showed
show jumpingShow jumping, also known as "stadium jumping" or "jumpers," is a member of a family 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...
and other
equestrianEquestrianism refers to the skill of riding or driving horses. This broad description includes both use of horses for practical, working purposes as well as recreational activities and competitive sports.-Overview of equestrian activities:...
events, especially in its earlier years, and towards the end of its life it showed
snookerSnooker is a cue sport that is played on a large baize-covered table with pockets in each of the four corners and in the middle of each of the long side cushions. A regulation table is . It is played using a cue and snooker balls: one white , 15 worth one point each, and six balls of different ...
extensively. 'Minority' sports were a feature throughout its run. 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. Two sports in particular
Ten-pin bowlingTen-pin bowling is a competitive sport in which a player rolls a bowling ball down a wooden or synthetic lane with the objective of scoring points by knocking down as many pins as possible.-Summary:The wide, lane is bordered along its length by "gutters”— semicircular channels designed to...
and
Kart racingKart racing or karting is a variant of open-wheel motor sport with simple, small four-wheeled vehicles called karts, go-karts, or gearbox/shifter karts depending on the design. They are usually raced on scaled-down circuits...
benefited from television exposure to a British public hitherto unaware of them.
British stock carDirt track racing is a type of auto racing performed on oval tracks throughout the United Kingdom. If the number of tracks is any indication of popularity, dirt track racing is the most popular auto racing sport in Britain. Dirt ovals outnumber all other types of tracks combined...
drivers such as Barry Lee also benefited from the show's exposure.
The programme also occasionally acquired the rights to genuinely major sporting events, such as the
Tour de FranceThe Tour de France is an annual bicycle race that covers approximately throughout France and bordering countries. The race lasts three weeks and attracts cyclists from around the world. The race is broken into day-long segments, called stages. Individual times to finish each stage are totalled to...
and the
Ryder CupThe Ryder Cup is a golf trophy, donated by Samuel Ryder, which is awarded biennially in an event called the "Ryder Cup Matches" between teams from Europe and the United States...
, admittedly this was in 1977 when the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
v
Great BritainGreat Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island. With a population of about 59.6 million people, it is the third most populated island on Earth. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1000 smaller...
and
IrelandIreland is a country in north-western Europe. The modern sovereign state occupies about five-sixths of the island of Ireland, which was partitioned on 3 May 1921. It is a parliamentary democracy and a republic...
match was regarded as something of a mismatch before Europe became the opposition.
A typical edition would be broadcast between 1215 and 1710 and would take on the following format.
- 1230 On The Ball
On The Ball was a British ITV Saturday lunchtime television show about football, which ran as part of World of Sport in the 1980s, and as a stand-alone show from 1998 to 2004....
- football preview with Brian MooreBrian Moore was a British sports commentator.-Early life:Moore was born in Gillingham, Kent and educated at the Cranbrook School, Kent.-Career:...
and in later years Ian St. JohnIan St. John is a former Scottish footballer. He is now a manager and pundit, who played for Scotland 21 times...
and Jimmy GreavesJames Peter 'Jimmy' Greaves is an English former football player, England's third highest international goalscorer, the highest goalscorer in the history of English top flight football and more recently a television pundit...
.
- 1300 Sports Special 1 - A wide array of sports, often including clips from US show Wide World of Sports. Less prominent sports such as bowls
Bowls is a sport in which the goal is to roll slightly asymmetric balls, called bowls, closest to a smaller—normally white—bowl called the "jack" or "kitty". Bowls, either flat- or crown-green, is usually played outdoors, on grass and synthetic surfaces. Flat-green bowls can also be...
, water skiingthumb|left|Slalom skierWaterskiing is a sport where an individual is pulled behind a motor boat or a cable ski installation on a body of water. The skier is either wearing one or two skis...
, speedwayMotorcycle speedway, usually referred to as speedway or flat track motorcycle racing , is a motorcycle sport involving four and sometimes up to six riders competing over four anti-clockwise laps of an oval circuit...
, rallyingRallying is a form of motor competition that takes place on public or private roads with modified production or specially built road-legal cars. This motorsport is distinguished by running not on a circuit, but instead in a point-to-point format in which participants and their co-drivers drive...
and others would also feature.
- 1330 Racing, The ITV Seven
The ITV Seven was an essential part of World of Sport in the United Kingdom. It started on 4 October 1969 when the programme began to show horse racing from two courses each week rather than one, under the title "They're Off". In the early 1970s it changed to the ITV Seven, reflecting the number...
.
- 1500 Sports Special 2 - see Sports Special 1.
- 1545 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.
- 1600 Wrestling - a mainstay of the World of Sport schedule from 1955 until it ended. Many of the wrestlers featured became household names in the UK and the greatest rivalry was between Big Daddy
Shirley Crabtree, Jr, better known as Big Daddy was an English professional wrestler famous for his record-breaking 64 inch chest...
and Giant Haystacks
- 1645 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 FinalThe FA Cup Final, commonly referred to in England as just The Cup Final is the last match in the Football Association Challenge Cup. With an official attendance of 89,826 at the 2007 FA Cup Final, it is the second best attended domestic club championship event in the world and the best attended...
also featured on World of Sport - with BBC and ITV often competing for viewers by broadcasting unusual features and occasionally early starts to their broadcasts to entice viewers to watch their coverage. The Cup Final was generally the only football match that was ever shown live on World of Sport.
Demise
Despite being a sports programme with cult status, running for twenty years, it was cancelled on September 28 1985 because of a change in emphasis at ITV Sport - racing coverage had switched to Channel 4, and there was a declining audience for wrestling at this point. Wrestling continued to have a programme at its own right but it was transmitted on lunchtimes at 12.30 rather than teatimes and stayed on air until December 1988. 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 about twice in the two years that it played in that slot. It has recently been re-run on The Fight Network since March, 2004. Football coverage also continued with previous
On the BallOn The Ball was a British ITV Saturday lunchtime television show about football, which ran as part of World of Sport in the 1980s, and as a stand-alone show from 1998 to 2004....
hosts
SaintIan St. John is a former Scottish footballer. He is now a manager and pundit, who played for Scotland 21 times...
and
GreavsieJames Peter 'Jimmy' Greaves is an English former football player, England's third highest international goalscorer, the highest goalscorer in the history of English top flight football and more recently a television pundit...
and a results service also aired during the football season.
Bob ColstonBob Colston is a broadcaster who was famous in the United Kingdom as the voice of the football results on the ITV programme World of Sport which ran from 1965 to 1985....
had been the only regular results announcer for the duration of World of Sport, John Tyrrel was the regular reader of the racing results in its later years (and continued to work on Channel 4 Racing until 1994).
After World of Sport ended
Live coverage of sports such as athletics, ice skating, and snooker continued to play a part in the Saturday afternoon schedule on ITV for some time but gradually diminshed after a few years.
The wrestling had its own slot at 12:30 in the afternoon - its own designated title sequences - viewers were promised American wrestling once a month - but it only ever appeared twice - that played in that slot for about a year - the rest of the afternoon was filled with American programmes.
As the racing had been moved to Channel 4, the decision to axe World Of Sport was necessary, as there was no sport to cover live.
ITV paid tribute to
World of Sport as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations in September 2005.
Theme tune
World of Sport had an iconic theme tune and opening credits which featured the ITV Sport logo and the programme name as trailing banners from light aircraft. The long running theme known as The World Of Sport March was composed by
Don HarperDon Harper was an Australian composer.Born in Melbourne in 1921, Don Harper showed an interest in music from an early age, learning to play the violin as a child...
. A later theme was composed by
Jeff WayneJeffrey "Jeff" Wayne is a musician mostly known for his musical version of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. He also wrote several advertising jingles in the 1970s which appeared on television in the United Kingdom, notably the Gordon's Gin commercial, which was then covered by The Human League...
.
Historic, noteworthy or bizarre live events broadcast
- On May 11, 1985, World of Sport switched its coverage to Valley Parade
Valley Parade, also known as the Coral Windows Stadium through sponsorship rights, is an all-seater football stadium in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It was built in 1886, and was the home of Manningham Rugby Football Club until 1903, when they changed code from rugby football to association...
stadium as match commentator John HelmJohn Helm is a commentator from Baildon, near Bradford, with over 25 years of network television experience, mainly with ITV. Now he is the voice of international broadcasts of the FIFA World Cup and other events...
, who had been covering the game for Yorkshire TelevisionYorkshire Television is the ITV contractor for the Yorkshire franchise. Up until 1974, this was primarily the three Ridings of Yorkshire and associated areas served by the Emley Moor television transmitter...
, described the events of the Bradford fireThe Bradford City Fire Disaster occurred on Saturday May 11, 1985 when a flash fire consumed one side of the Valley Parade football stadium in Bradford, England....
as they unfolded.
- Eric Morecambe
John Eric Bartholomew OBE , better known by his stage name Eric Morecambe, was an English comedian who together with Ernie Wise formed the award-winning double act Morecambe and Wise. The partnership lasted from 1941 until Morecambe's death of a heart attack in 1984...
appeared as a guest on the Christmas Eve edition of World Sport in 1977 causing mayhem by entertaining and trying to disrupt his friend Dickie Davies' presentation links. http://tv.cream.org/specialassignments/presenters/d.htm
- The most notorious out-take of the live show featured a spoonerism
A spoonerism is an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched . It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner , Warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this tendency...
from presenter Dickie Davies who mispronounced the following week's cup soccer as cop sucker, which unfortunately sounded very similar to cock sucker. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20050917/ai_n15353503
- The show featured rows of typists sat behind the main presenter, looking as though they were preparing items for the show. In fact they were administration staff at LWT, moved from their offices to the studio on a Saturday afternoon. The material they were actually typing was often scripts, internal memos or replies to fan mail.
Trivia
- Fred Dinenage
Fred Edgar Dinenage is an English television host and newsreader, based in the south of England.Dinenage has appeared as presenter of many British television programmes , such as Gambit , Tell The Truth, How, and its successor How...
was the regular relief presenter for the show, occasionally standing in for Davies.
Its logo resembled a combination of a general sports ball, the terrestrial globe and a letter S.
It was parodied in the final series of
TiswasTiswas was a Saturday morning children's British TV show which ran from 5 January 1974 to 3 April 1982 and was produced for the ITV network by ATV Network Limited....
as "Backwards Sport Of World" - the sketch would start with the World Of Sport logo printed as if viewed in a mirror and the ad break theme (the one used in the commercial break in the wrestling) played backwards and featured events such as "Suction Snooker", where the referee would "hide" the balls in the pockets and the players had to suck them out - regular snooker played backwards, and a horse race which "finished" in a dead heat - horses ran backwards round a racecourse - bits of sports footage played in reverse at normal speed that looked comical when played backwards and didn't look the same whether played forwards or backwards.
External links