Conclusion

Abstract

This book has focused on a span of 31 years of televised sport from 1936 to 1967, documenting the BBC’s first formal broadcasts from sport, the hiatus during the Second World War and relaunch in 1946, to the official introduction of colour television in Britain in 1967. Although this periodisation may seem arbitrary, it has been a way of capturing the story of what might be termed the formative relationship between sport and television. In other words, the book has charted the extended courtship in the marriage of two central characteristics of the British popular cultural establishment: the leisure pastimes of sport and television. Towards the end of this period, where this book signs off, the technologies of television and the culture of the medium were being transformed in some radical ways, much of which was starting to be driven by the coverage of sport. The turn to colour was part of this process, but so too was the use of satellite links to live sporting action from around the world, especially during the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games, and the increasing innovations in the use of slow-motion and instant replays. There were cultural transformations too. In Britain, the BBC’s near monopoly of sport on television began to be challenged seriously for the first time. London Weekend Television’s The Big Match, featuring former footballer and Coventry City manager Jimmy Hill and former BBC radio commentator Brian Moore, was making genuine inroads into the coverage of domestic football in England. Allied to this was the increasing visibility of advertising at sporting venues, and more crucially sponsorship of events, all strategically positioned for the television cameras. Viewers were exposed to an emergent globalisation of sport events, which was widening the exposure of sport stars, not only as athletes, but also as television personalities to provide colour and insight from within sport. The emergence of agents and publicists in sport, such as Bagenal Harvey in the UK and Mark McCormack in the USA, and their influence on the structure and economics of sport were also significant developments. These remain recognisable traits of contemporary mediatised sport, but the first 30 years of sport on television had a very different sensibility, pace and visual texture. It was genuinely experimental. It pushed the boundaries of technology and the logistics of the medium. It crafted new production practices from solving the limitations of available technology to create innovations in programming that endure to this day. For those working in BBC Television Sport, they were at the margins of broadcasting, not its epicentre. It is for these and other reasons that the book has explored this 30-year period.