Features
The show included popular segments such as On the Ball (a preview of the day's football action), the ITV Seven (horse racing), and wrestling with commentator Kent Walton. It also showed sports not seen elsewhere, such as women's hockey, netball, lacrosse, water skiing and stock car racing or sports that were not popular with the British mainstream, such as NASCAR and ice speedway. It featured bizarre sports like the World Barrel Jumping Championships, and even death-defying stunts.
It often showed show jumping and other equestrian events, especially in its earlier years, and towards the end of its life it showed snooker 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 bowling and kart racing benefited from television exposure to a British public hitherto unaware of them. British stock car 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 France and the Ryder Cup. Admittedly this was in 1977 when the United States v Great Britain and Ireland match was regarded as something of a mismatch before Europe became the opposition.
During the football season, the programme would normally finish with the Results Service, which started shortly before the full-time whistles started to go in the afternoon games on Saturday.
A typical edition would be broadcast between 1215 and 1710 and would take on the following format.
- 1230 On The Ball - football preview with Brian Moore and in later years Ian St. John and Jimmy Greaves.
- 1300 Sports Special 1 - A wide array of sports, often including clips from US show Wide World of Sports. Less prominent sports such as darts, snooker, bowls, water skiing, speedway, rallying and others would also feature.
- 1330 Racing, The ITV Seven.
- 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 1965 until it ended. Many of the wrestlers featured became household names in the UK and the greatest rivalry was between Big Daddy 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 Final also featured on World of Sport - with BBC and ITV often competing for viewers by broadcasting unusual features with early starts to their broadcasts to entice viewers to watch their coverage. The Cup Final was generally the only football match that was shown live on World of Sport.
Read more about this topic: World Of Sport (UK TV Series)
Famous quotes containing the word features:
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother’s face,
Her aspect and her attitude.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)