I’d say as a guess 2-3 per week (a Sunday Afternoon and Saturday Night live as a minimum, and then perhaps an extra Friday game if the Warriors or Reds were the home team but using TVNZ or 9 Perth callers).
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Bear with me with this.
I’ve received audio only of ABC TV’s broadcast of 1974 Grand Final.
Commentators Peter Booth and Thorold Merrett.
As it is only audio - I’ve uploaded it as an episode to my podcast - ROAR: Richmond Football Club History
So for anyone who wishes to listen to it, can do so whereever they access their podcasts,
or there is a soundcloud link here: Stream 1974GF ABCTV *RARE* by Rhett Bartlett | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
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I’m pretty sure they filled some of the empty time with Sheffield Shield live coverage too, although I can’t remember whether they used their Sports Australia 2 popup for that.
Sounds strange in 2023, to think that 25 years ago, that both pay services only had one and a half generalist sports stations of their own (Sports Australia 2 was a pop-up well down the channel order at the time afaict, and Fox Sports 2 only ran Friday to Monday) - with Sports AFL also being there on Optus, and ESPN floating around too [was that only on Optus at the time too?].
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For this they were referring to Optus Sport pre-2018 mate 
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Fair, I might’ve been confused with that post compared to all the other conversations about 1996 rugby league on Optus Vision around it and didn’t click the original posts; apologies. 
If we’re talking early “current version of Optus Sport” for the cricket comment, then yeah, appears like they did over the 2016/17 summer, and that makes sense as Optus were Cricket Australia’s online/mobile sponsors then (before Kayo took over more recently). But no live cricket content, instead you got free access (as did other Optus customers) to the CA content, and Optus Sport 2 showed archives and replays by the looks of it.
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Most of the regional stations took the match on delay, some later on in the night, others days later.
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Interesting - thanks (I’m too young to remember)
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I never liked Terry Kennedy as a footy commentator.
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I miss TK on Sky sports radio’s Big Breakfast
English sports commentator Dickie Davies has died at age 94. He is not someone familiar to me at all but Twitter has featured the closing credits of his ITV World Of Sport show, and some familiar Australian names appeared in the credits for its Australian rules football coverage. I wonder what the Brits thought of Lou Richards’ commentary??
I am also not at all familiar with the ITV WOS show but the typing pool in the background probably created theatrics for a sense of gathering and compiling sports results but looks rather quaint
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ITV’s World of Sport was similar to Nine’s Wide World of Sports in format but was basically a sport equivalent of TV-am in that it was also used as a ‘wrap around’ brand containing numerous other magazine programs and even news updates from ITN airing alongside live sport and results services.
Previous hosts also included:
Eamonn Andrews (the first presenter of the UK version of This Is Your Life)
Fred Dinenage (Presenter of How, How 2, and ITV News Meridian amongst many other programs)
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Seven tried a similar format in 2002 (when they lost the AFL rights) with Sportswatch on Saturday, it was a rolling sports news programme similar to Fox Sports News, Bruce McAvaney was the host. Apparently the AFL complained about them showing highlights and scores whilst the game was still in play (Ten who had the Saturday arvo AFL rights had to show these games on delay in Victoria). It didn’t last long.
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I do remember this show… They had a sport’s ticker scrolling across the bottom of the screen (one of the first in this country) with tv monitors in the background. The show went for about 3-4 hours from memory. Was it only on Saturdays?
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My dad loved Sportswatch, it was appointment viewing for him.
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Does anyone have a source for the games broadcast by pay tv in the 1996 and 1997 ARL and 1998 NRL seasons?
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i meant to post here ages ago, i have a Collingwood West Coast game from early 1987 broadcast on 7 Perth would anyone know the story behind why? because in 1987 the VFL was on the ABC
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I think ABC only had rights in Victoria and replays in NSW and Canberra. SAS-10 had rights in Adelaide, so presumably TVW-7 (owned by the same group) had rights in Perth.
SBS also showed games live into Sydney.
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