Sports Broadcasting History

TV History
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Welcome to a new thread for Sports Broadcasting history.

Plenty of fun we can have here.

Do some of our ahem older members recall how the 1992 Cricket World Cup was broadcast? I’ve seen clips of NZ based games where I’m pretty sure I recall Richie Benaud commentating. TVNZ had the New Zealand rights.

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I quite remember the opener of TVNZ coverage which was a game of office cricket. It was also shown on Channel Nine in Australia.

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2007 Cricket World Cup Final on 9

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Here’s something interesting, a pre-season (Ansett Cup) game from late January 2000. As a YouTube user described it:

The then new Seven logo, the then new AFL logo and the 2000 lists with a slightly updated 1999 Seven Sports graphics pack and Waverley Park as the venue. It feels like it shouldn’t have existed but in this small overlap of time, It did."

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The first “The One to Watch” ident with the ribbon logo was shown at the start of the video.

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heres the 2000 channel 9 f1 intro. The sport was treated with almost no respect by 9 - Quali was a 30 sec highlights package and races were shown on delay - there were often occasions when they would show a newsbreak during the coverage giving away the result! It was often suspected by fans 9 only brought the rights for season to enable them to show the aussie race and didn’t care about the rest

in 2003 coverage moved to 10 who treated it with respect - Quali and races were generally live on one (or minimally delayed). I remember the talk in the paddock at the 2002 aus GP when it was rumoured not only 10 had the 2003 rights but were showing qualifying live - there were alot of happy people. In terms of production and commentary nothing changed - we took the world feed with James Allen and Martin Brundle so all it meant for fans was better timeslots

of course now on foxtel we have F1 in 4K with live practice, quali and races with pre and post quali and race shows.

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Here’s some footage of Wide World of Sport from 1991

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To be fair to Nine, Ten did the same thing with broadcasting Asian/European races on delay due to primetime programming. Eventually One came along which was certainly a positive for F1 coverage.

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10 have had MotoGP rights including the Australian MotoGP at Phillip Island for it feels like an eternity!

Just on 10’s motorsport, Leigh Diffey (former 10 host/commentator/presenter/reporter - whom replaced Bill Woods’ roles and in turn was replaced by Greg Rust) was recently featured in a story on ST, about him going great guns commentating NASCAR in the US for big network.

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Nine had the motorbikes before Ten with Daryl Eastlake and Barry Sheene. Prior to 1989, the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix wasn’t part of the world championship, but coverage was provided by SBS and ABC with races held at various venues such as Sandown, Bathurst and Winton.

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I think 10 have been airing it since at least the late 90s?

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That sounds about right.

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And when they did broadcast the Aussie race, they often spent more time talking about the celebrity race than the actual GP itself.

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First AFL telecast on the Nine Network between Richmond v Collingwood at the MCG in Round 1 at 28 March 2002. During the start of the telecast, voiceover, Steve Britten did the narrations. After that, Eddie McGuire, host of Nine’s AFL coverage introduced to Nine’s telecast.


St Kilda v Carlton was the first AFL match being telecasted on TEN in ROund 1 at 30 March 2002. They didn’t have the countdown timer on the screen. As well as that where was the 5-minute warning?
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here in nz we had our local tvnz commentators
then it shared with channel 9 clearly for the aussie based games
however for the final we sent our own commentors

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All commentators are working on Fox Footy apart from Dennis Cometti calling matches for Triple M/Mix 94.5 in Perth

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It was a Fox Footy match. They used the same graphics as Channel 10 from 2002-2003, but didn’t choose to use the 5 minute warning.

This would be TEN’s first match (excluding the Wizard Cup):

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10’s broadcast of the 2002 Wizard Cup Grand Final. Holy Grail can be heard at halftime which would be their theme song for AFL matches.

They signed off with “Holy Grail” after the 2011 Grand Final

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First telecast of an AFL (Wizard Cup) game on Channel Nine. What’s interesting is that Eddie McGuire is commentating alongside Tim Lane, who said he didn’t want to call games alongside Eddie (who would?) and left before round one of the AFL Premiership Season.

But it was a great outcome for Tim on Channel 10, who would go on to commentate 4 grand finals, while Eddie commentated 0…

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The new scoring graphics and the new theme song (Stand Tough by UK band Point Break) would not appear until the start of the 2000 home and away season.