14-06-2022, 09:10 AM
(This post was last modified: 14-06-2022, 09:11 AM by Steve Williams.)
(14-06-2022, 06:53 AM)Markymark Wrote: Someone on DS mentioned yesterday that back in the 70s, some local newspapers would publish a Saturday evening edition that would include that afternoon's sports results. That was impressive!
Yes, the Saturday Pink, many newspapers did these which were particularly haphazard publications. I had a couple of Sunderland pinks from the mid-80s I got from a car boot sale, and aesthetically they were appalling, with match reports spread across the pages in dribs and drabs depending on when each page was printed, with a Stop Press column on the back page with the final scores from some of the matches featured elsewhere in the paper which hadn't finished before that page went to press. One of them I have is from the day of the Bradford fire, with very sketchy reports throughout.
When I lived in Cleethorpes twenty years ago now, the local pink there came to an end and I bought the special commemorative final issue with various front pages over the years. That paper had a mascot on the front page and if Grimsby had a good result it would be smiling, if it was alright it would be fairly passive and if it was a bad result they'd be scowling, which would serve as an immediate way to find out the result without even having to read the story.
The last Saturday pink in Britain seems to have been in Southampton, which folded in 2017 - https://pressgazette.co.uk/the-end-of-an...119-years/
One of the other oddities about Grandstand in the seventies is that some of the match reports would actually come from a studio, either the Grandstand studio or a regional one, rather than the actual match, which meant the reporter would actually have to leave the game before the end to make it to the studio, and sometimes not make it.
Bob Wilson always told the story about the first time he ever did a match report for Grandstand, one of his first ever TV jobs, he reported from Arsenal vs Man U from the Grandstand studio (which I reckon was probably this match in August 1973 - https://www.11v11.com/matches/arsenal-v-...973-82092/). He was a bit nervous about this, but David Coleman said it would be fine as long as he got his first line right, so he should come up with a first line, memorise it, and then deliver it and after that it would all flow naturally. So he came up with "I've just got back from Highbury where Alan Ball was the man of the match", repeated it to himself over and over again in the car back to the studio and then Frank Bough introduced him by saying "Let's hear from Bob Wilson who's just got back from Highbury where Alan Ball was the man of the match. That right, Bob?"
(14-06-2022, 06:53 AM)Markymark Wrote: Didn't Wales opt out before the end of Grandstand (and not opt back) with Wales on Saturday?
Yes, in the late eighties I think they started doing Wales on Saturday: The Results instead of Final Score, and then the regional news was extended to haf an hour and was billed as Wales on Saturday: The Magazine, which meant BBC Wales would always opt out of the first programme on BBC1 on Saturday evening. That was alright when it was usually a cartoon or Dad's Army, but when The Simpsons started at 5.30 on Saturdays in 1996, that was too important for Wales to opt out of, so Wales on Saturday moved to BBC2. That caused a bit of a stink in our local paper in Wrexham, because the Wrexham transmitter only broadcast BBC1 Wales and S4C, so it was very hard to pick up BBC2 Wales.
Wales on Saturday carried on until quite recently, the bit that opted out of Final Score, I think it only ended about a decade ago. BBC Scotland still opt out of Final Score. Northern Ireland used to opt out of the last bit of Final Score, they used to go straight after the classified results at 5pm, but I don't think they do now. I don't think any of the English regions ever opted out of it.