"If you're burning to find out where your Sunday afternoon televisual
companions of yore are hanging out now (or are buried), this is the place to
look."

From a review of this site by Ian Plenderleith (WSC 199)

This website represents an expanded version of an article written by myself that was published in the August 2002 edition of When Saturday Comes. It is an attempt to chronicle the (surprisingly neglected) history of football on ITV.

ITV were in fact the first channel to cover a live Football League match.  From 1968 to 1983, each weekend various ITV regions would screen a local game.  Those years, and their idiosyncratic local commentators and styles of coverage, inspire much nostalgic affection amongst football fans and will be the main subject of this site.

The BBC have always been viewed as the "Number One" channel for sports coverage.  Whenever live games (such as FA Cup Finals or key England internationals) were screened on both sides, the BBC were comfortable winners.  The BBC have also been better at celebrating their history.  In 1984, five programmes looked back at "Match of the Day"s first 20 years.  The extensive "Match of the Day" archive also brought forth several videos, Dennis Waterman's "Soccer in the Seventies" shows and a book by John Motson chronicling the history of the programme.

By contrast, ITV have woefully neglected their football heritage.  Nobody seems quite sure just how much material survives in their vaults.  Apart from "The Big Match Replayed" (aired during the summer months in the early hours of the morning) and a few regional programmes (Anglia's "Shake, Rattle and Goal" or Tyne Tees' "Football Flashback"), there has been little attempt to exploit the undoubted commercial potential of the ITV archive (which, due to the regional format, embraces many more games than the BBC).  Indeed, apart from my own records, I am doubtful if a master list even exists of all the matches ITV screened.

This website then has 3 main purposes:

Additional information, scanned images and nostalgic memories are very welcome; please write to john@bournagain.freeserve.co.uk

You can visit my main website, Bourn Again, at this address

TV Ark, "the online museum of British television", has a wonderful collection of vintage clips, including some from ITV Sport programmes

JOHN BOURN, November 2003

___________________________________________________________________________

                                                                                                  Latest updates

23rd August 2004 - New material added to Pages 2, 7 and (especially) Page 8

27th June 2003 - Page 8 ("Bourn's Bonus") added

7th November 2003 - New articles added to Page 8.  Also more information added to the LWT article (Page 6)

___________________________________________________________________________

 

 

Page 2 - Timeline of ITV Football

Page 3 - The 7-hour countdown to ITV's Saturday night kick-off

Page 4 - ITV network map

Page 5 - ITV Football, region by region (Part 1)

Page 6 - ITV Football, region by region (Part 2)

Page 7 - ITV Football, region by region (Part 3)

Page 8 - Bourn's Bonus!

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Legal Note

This is a non-commercial website devoted to chronicling the history of football on ITV. The content provided on this website is for entertainment/educational purposes only.

If any of the material here is causing offence, please contact me to have it removed, or preferably to arrange to be given specific credit for them.  Wherever possible, I have endeavoured to contact the original copyright holders.

Section 30 (1) of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 states that "Fair dealing with a work for the purpose of criticism or review, of that or another work or of a performance of a work, does not infringe any copyright in the work provided that it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement. "

All text © JOHN BOURN