Grandstand (TV programme)

Grandstand was the former flagship sports programme of the British Broadcasting Corporation which was broadcast on Saturday afternoons on BBC1 between 1958 and 2007, and from 1981 on Sunday afternoons as Sunday Grandstand on BBC2, although until 1998 the Sunday edition aired only during the summer.

This article is about the BBC sports programme. For other television series of this name, see Grandstand (disambiguation).

Grandstand
The programme's original opening titles
Created by
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of episodes3500 (estimated)
Production
Running timevarious
Release
Original network
Original release11 October 1958 (1958-10-11) –
28 January 2007 (2007-01-28)

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

History

During the 1950s, sports coverage on television in the United Kingdom gradually expanded. The BBC regularly broadcast sports programmes with an outside studio team, occasionally from two or three separate locations. Production assistant Bryan Cowgill put forward a proposal for a programme lasting three hours; one hour dedicated to major events and two hours showing minor events. Outside Broadcast members held a meeting in April 1958, and Cowgill further detailed his plans taking timing and newer technical facilities into consideration. During the development of the programme, problems arose over the proposed schedule which would result in the programme ending at 4:45pm to allow children's programmes to go out. Paul Fox insisted that the service was broadcast until 5:00pm to ensure a proper results service.[1]

Three weeks before the debut of the programme, sports broadcaster Peter Dimmock favoured naming the show Out and About! with Fox persuading Dimmock to agree on a new name, which was Grandstand. Grandstand launched on 11 October 1958 from Lime Grove Studios with Dimmock as the presenter. Dimmock presented the first two editions and three weeks later, he was replaced by sports commentator David Coleman.[2] In the autumn of 1959, Grandstand was extended by an extra 15 minutes and would finish at 5:00pm every Saturday.[1] According to Richard Haynes in BBC Sport in Black and White, the 1960s saw the Grandstand name "become synonymous with the BBC's coverage of sport" and it "became a trusted vehicle for British viewers to access a variety of sports."[3]

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 Paralympic Games, the Commonwealth Games and the FIFA World Cup (from 1998 FIFA World Cup coverage would switch from Grandstand to Match of the Day branding).

From the programme's launch until the lifting of restrictions on broadcasting hours by the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications in 1972, sports coverage was one of the few programming areas which was exempt from the broadcasting hours restrictions. Instead, sporting coverage and outside broadcasts were provided with a separate quota of broadcasting hours per year by the Postmaster General. By the mid 1960s this amounted to 350 hours per year. This meant Grandstand was a key part of the BBC's Saturday afternoon schedules, as the time the programme was on the air did not count towards the 50-hour a week restriction on normal broadcasting hours.

Beginning in the early 1980s, a lunchtime news summary provided by BBC News was included in the broadcast, functioning as a programme break between Football Focus and the start of that week's live events.

Football Focus
See also: Football Focus

The first item of the programme which began in the early afternoon during the football season was the football magazine show “Football Focus”. It began for several years up to 1974, on as a slot called "Football Preview", previewing the day's matches within Division One and later on the Premier League and also the FA Cup and international weekends and featured interviews with players and also the managers and in 1974 it was evolved into Football Focus which continued to be part of Grandstand until 2001 when it then was made into a tv programme in its own right.

Around the Grounds

Between the main live sporting events being shown on the day in the mid afternoon a brief segment was shown where the programme went around the football grounds just prior to the 3pm kick-offs with the on site commentators announcing the team line ups and pre match news. This was done in the format of “Final Score”.

Final Score
See also: Final Score

In the late afternoon during the football season, 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. When all the football results were in it would be then be time for the “Classified Football Results” when all the scores would be read out line by line on screen. 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). Whilst football was the primary focus of Final Score, news and results from other sports, such as rugby union, and until 1987, racing results, were also included.

A shorter version was aired during the summer during the football close season, and stand-alone editions of Final Score were broadcast on Boxing Day, New Year's Day and Easter Monday when there was a full programme of football fixtures and when Grandstand was not being shown.

Winter phase TV schedule format

In the winter format the main live sporting events on the programme were centred around the afternoon's 3pm football matches with ”Football Focus” opening the programme and ”Final Score” which closed the programme. Live coverage was mostly racing during the early part of the programme and rugby (both codes), kicking off at either 2.30 or 3pm which was timed and centred into the programme to avoid any clash with the final football results which would come in after 4.40pm with the minor pre-recorded sporting items mostly proceeding the main event in the early afternoon. An example of this format is seen from the schedule below dated Saturday 31st October 1992 with the main event of the day in bold: [4]

12:15 Grandstand Opening
12:20 Football Focus
12:50 BBC News
12:55 Racing
13:10 Motor Sport
13:25 Racing
13:40 Motor Sport
13:55 Racing
14:10 Boxing
14:30 Rugby Union: Ireland v Australia
16:20 Motor Sport
16:40-17:05: Final Score

Summer phase TV schedule format

The summer phase format was used outside of the football season, it was less formal than the winter format and the programme centred more on the live events in which it was covering and sometimes the programme would begin earlier than its normal regular slot, at just before 11am so that the programme could show live cricket from the start of the day's play. Here is an example of a typical show from 12 June 1993, with the main event of the day in bold.[5]

12:15 Grandstand Opening
12:35 Motorsport
13:00 BBC News
13:05 Tennis: Queens
15:00 Athletics
16:00 Swimming/Athletics/Tennis
17:15 Close

Sunday Grandstand

A Sunday edition, named Sunday Grandstand, launched in 1981 and was broadcast on BBC2 (though a few pilot editions were shown on BBC1 in 1978, 1979 and 1980). Until 1998, the Sunday edition was usually only broadcast during the summer months, although there were exceptions, such as a special edition in January 1995 to cover the second Regal Trophy semi-final (Wigan v Castleford).

From February 1998 Sunday Grandstand became a year-round programme, incorporating the Ski Sunday and Rugby Special programmes.[6]

Competition from ITV

Between 1965 and 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

From the 1990's onwards the programme’s scope of sporting coverage began to diminish as the BBC began to lose major broadcasting sports rights including live Formula One which went to ITV, the FA Cup, England's home cricket test matches, Sunday League cricket, the NatWest Trophy and the Ryder Cup particularly to the then emerging Sky Sports and even lost some rights to Channel 4. Grandstand was not shown on 20 May 2000 as no major sporting events broadcast by the BBC were taking place.[7] In 2001 the Corporation lost the rights to show weekly highlights of the Premier League although it did regain the rights to show live FA Cup and England football internationals.

In October 2001, the head of BBC Sports and Programming Pat Younge announced plans to revamp Grandstand by placing emphasis on broadcasting one particular sport rather than alternating between several sports.[8]

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. The host would be associated with that feature; for example, Hazel Irvine would host snooker, Sue Barker for tennis, Clare Balding for racing or rugby league, and John Inverdale for rugby union.

Football Focus and Final Score part company

In August 2001, the Football Focus section, having been the first feature on Grandstand since 1974, became a separate programme in its own right. This meant that Grandstand's start time was now 13:00 rather than 12:15.

At the same time, Final Score also become a programme in its own right, running from 16:30, meaning that Grandstand only broadcast between 13:00 and 16:30. "Around the Grounds" and 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 14:30, and was available as an add-on service on the Red Button until 16:30 when BBC One 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 fifty years,[9] due to the increasing use of interactive services and the need to meet the challenges of the digital, on-demand world.[10] This had been hinted at by the dropping of the "Grandstand" title from the BBC's coverage of the major international sporting events, like that year's Winter Olympics and Commonwealth Games.[11]

It was originally intended that the show would end in 2009, but this was brought forward to 28 January 2007.

After Grandstand ended

The last Saturday edition of Grandstand was broadcast on 27 January 2007, and the final edition was broadcast the following day, 28 January 2007, with a short tribute to the history of the show forming its final feature. Sport still features prominently on the BBC's schedules on Saturday afternoon as well as on BBC Red Button and iPlayer; Final Score is still shown at the end of the football matches played on Saturday afternoon.[12]

Presenters

Hosts included Peter Dimmock, David Coleman, Frank Bough, Des Lynam, Steve Rider, Ronald Allison, Clare Balding, Sue Barker, Barry Davies, Dougie Donnelly, Harry Carpenter, Harry Gration, Tony Gubba, David Icke, John Inverdale, Hazel Irvine, Gary Lineker, Roger Black, Helen Rollason, Ray Stubbs, David Vine, Alan Weeks and Bob Wilson.

Theme tune

The original theme was "News Scoop" by Len Stevens, which was used until 6 November 1971. From 13 November 1971 to 11 October 1975, another tune, composed by Barry Stoller, who also composed the Match of the Day theme, was used. The programme's longest running theme, composed for the programme by Keith Mansfield, was first broadcast at the end of the 11 October 1975 edition (the 1000th edition of Grandstand) (and apart from a brief remix which commenced in 1999 but dropped after a few weeks due to complaints) [13] remained until the end of the programme's existence.

Notable live events

See also

References
  1. Whannel, Garry (2013). Fields in Vision: Television Sport and Cultural Transformation. Routledge. ISBN 9781134938605.
  2. Deans, Jason (15 August 2002). "Grandstand: a history". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
  3. Haynes, Richard (2016). BBC Sport in Black and White. Berlin, Germany: Springer Science+Business Media. p. 157. ISBN 978-1-137-45501-7.
  4. "Schedule - BBC Programme Index". Genome.ch.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
  5. "Schedule - BBC Programme Index". Genome.ch.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
  6. "Schedule - BBC Programme Index". Genome.ch.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
  7. Mcleod, Maurice (17 May 2000). "Sport-free BBC shelves Grandstand on Cup final day". The Independent. London. Retrieved 24 May 2014.
  8. Deans, Jason (30 October 2001). "BBC to overhaul Grandstand". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 28 September 2014.
  9. Plunkett, John; Gibson, Owen (25 April 2006). "Final whistle for BBC's Grandstand". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 24 May 2014.
  10. "BBC is to scrap show Grandstand". BBC News. 24 April 2006. Retrieved 6 March 2019.
  11. Davies, Hugh (25 April 2006). "Grandstand finish as BBC blows the whistle". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 24 May 2014.
  12. Roger Mosey (26 January 2007). "Roger Mosey on plans after Grandstand". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
  13. "BBC GRANDSTAND - RARE 1999 THEME". Retrieved 25 October 2023 – via YouTube.
  14. "Jacklin's play reaches full maturity" by Peter Ryde, The Times page 13, 18 September 1967
  15. Bathurst, Mark (28 March 2008). "1978 Boat Race: The day my heart sank". Telegraph. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
  16. "BBC ON THIS DAY - 1984: Boat race halted before starting". BBC News. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
  17. "April Fools: Grandstand's prank from the archives". BBC Sport. 1 April 2013. Retrieved 13 November 2013.
  18. "Racing: The day Dettori's Magnificent Seven left the bookies in tears". The Independent. 23 September 2006. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
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