ITV's digital portfolio

So it’s happy fifth birthday, today, to ITV3. And a tip of the hat to ITV4 which is also celebrating – four years of service.

By way of a tribute, one-man OTT-updating machine Dominic Small returns with a history of ITV’s digital strategy. From ONDigital, to ITV2, there have certainly been ups and downs. As Dominic reminds us, the network’s nascent dabbles in the digital market weren’t very successful…

“ITV regional operators did dip their toes into the satellite pool quite early on, with mixed results. Many of the ITV franchisees of the time worked together to launch a new UK-based satellite channel with Europe-wide broadcast, though this pioneering venture – Superchannel – was not as successful as had been hoped and later ended up in the hands of an Italian firm, and subsequently the American broadcaster NBC, who dumped much of the UK content for US-produced output.”

For more, Read the feature »

Last year, The Big Match Revisited was a hugely welcome romp through the archives, where each week the football highlights 25 years to the week were unspooled, with all the contemporary news (“The Football Association are considering a bid to host the 1986 World Cup!”) and views (“Keith Burkinshaw slams three points for a win!”) intact. It wasn’t just The Big Match itself that came under the spotlight either – we also got Granada’s Match Time and, brilliantly, TVS’s Saturday Match during the course of the series.

For the new run we’re going back 30 years, taking us from the despair and despondency of mid-’80s football to the glory days of the 1970s, and the series began on New Year’s Day with what’s considered to be one of the finest football matches ever played – Manchested United 3, West Bromwich Albion 5 from 30 December 1978. If this were covered by the BBC, it would probably be one of the most famous matches ever and as familiar as the 1966 World Cup Final in terms of repeats, but because ITV have never been very interested in exploiting their football archive, it remains a rare treat.

One of the few occasions it’s been dug out in the past was a decade ago when it was screened as part of the similiar Big Match Replayed that used to run in the middle of the night. Then, it was as edited highlights seen on LWT, but this time, ITV4 dug out the original Kick Off Match show from Granada with extended highlights. As well as commentating on the match (and his “Oooooh, what a goooooal!” for Albion’s fifth is one of the great commentary moments), Gerald Sinstadt also presented the show, in front of a brilliantly cheap set which looked like he was perched in a photo booth. His links were also accompanied by the sort of ambient noise which suggested it had been flung up in a corridor.

As usual, though, it wasn’t just the football action that entertained, but the detrius that surrounded it. Gerald apologised that because the main match was so fantastic, they could only show a few minutes of the other game. A brief two-minute summary of the action from Arsenal helped remind us, at a time when fans of Premiership clubs complain when their team is featured last on Match of the Day, there was an era when you’d be grateful to see any footage of your team at all.

Finally Gerald rounded up the highlights of 1978 on The Kick Off Match, with Everton beating Coventry on a pitch with the left side completely obliterated by snow (as if the groundsman couldn’t be bothered clearing it all and asked the teams to try and play down the right if they could), and Bolton’s manager looking shattered as his team went up. He stood in the dressing room next to a bloke making the tea wearing a tracksuit emblazoned with “CAMBRIAN SOFT DRINKS”. It’s ironic that while shirt sponsorship was a no-no on telly at the time, this guy got away with branding less subtle than anything you get now.

All topped off with the most demented theme tune you’ll ever hear, as ever this was ace from start to finish. The series should be continuing, hopefully continuing to cherry-pick across the regions, every Thursday lunchtime until the spring, and it’ll be absolutely fantastic.

But no, as yesterday’s first programme turned out to be nothing but an old football programme shown its in entirety from beginning to end. One thing it wasn’t, however, was The Big Match. Instead it was an episode of Granada’s crapply-titled equivalent Match Time from exactly 25 years ago this week, during the last few months of the old ITV regional systemwhereby each of the main regions would mount their own highlights show, with extended coverage of a local match and then edited highlights of the games covered by the other regions.

As well as the end for that system, in 1983 it looked like it was nearly the end for football full stop, and the programme gloomily reported on Blackpool and Wigan enjoying their lowest ever attendances, and Everton welcoming just 14,000 people through the turnstiles (such a momentous figure it was superimposed over a crap library shot of Goodison Park to emphasise this).

Perhaps the oddest aspect from a modern perspective was that reporting on these numbers as part of his news round-up was Denis Law, one of the most charismatic and popular players of his generation, who spent the whole programme sat next to main anchor Elton Welsby reading out results and introducing black and white photographs of goals that hadn’t been filmed. This seems a real waste, it’d be like Alan Hansen’s only role on Match of the Day being to read out the league table.

Still, it was a fascinating and evocative show, with Elton referring to “Yorkshire Television’s outside broadcast unit”, hoardings at all the grounds about saving water and even a late result from Torquay United, who for some reason played most of their home games on Saturday nights at the time. The football action was all the more nostalgic being surrounded by cardboard graphics and hideously stilted interviews.

Judging by the trailer in The Championship last week (and it says a lot about ITV Sport’s current portfolio that this was the only football they were able to promote), during the run – which is apparently going to cover each week 25 years ago for the rest of the season – we’ll be gallivanting across the country and dropping in on other regions’ programmes. We certainly got a clip of Fred Dinenage, so that’ll be one to watch.

So well done to ITV4 for what’s bound to be the best series they’ve ever screened. And maybe by May I’ll work out just why so many people took bog roll to matches to throw on the pitch.