There was a rapid-fire and entertaining montage of moments both oddball and iconic (1966 Hurst hat-trick goal, athlete falling on face and chucking javelin half an inch), and that was it. Cheerio, half-a-century of broadcasting. It was like watching an elderly cuckold tossing a wedding ring into the sea.

This was a death foretold; the old warhorse’s last plod to the knackers’ yard has been public knowledge for some time, but it still came as a shock. Instead of a long-fanfared conclusion, a peroration peopled by television titans (oh my Bough and my Carpenter long ago!), Grandstand‘s departure has been suspiciously unheralded by the BBC.

This could be due to plain embarrassment. Its flagship sports show was holed amidships in the 1980s, when its ability to cherry-pick the world’s greatest sporting events was undermined by new broadcasting competition rules. In stepped ITV, hitherto restricted to showing Paraplegic Cheese-Rolling from Helions Bumpstead, last summer’s Salt Lake City Virginia Slims Mixed Pole-Squat Classic and (marginally even dafter) wrestling from places like Mexborough with the likes of Les Kellett and Adrian Street on the endearingly idiotic World of Sport; and later, Sky’s bottomless coffers spirited even more premium events away. It was almost certainly this denuding of the best bits of Grandstand – a show set up to cater to working people who, in 1958 (the year of its inception) usually worked on Saturday mornings – that served to reinforce the ringfencing of “reserved” events which ensures coverage of the likes of the Cup Final and Grand National on terrestrial TV.

As such the show was never the same again, relying increasingly on horse-racing (now more of a Channel 4 preserve) and all-conquering athletics, or as it’s now known, “Track and Field”. The BBC has clawed back some of those sport-TV “crown jewels” – Six Nations rugby, England football internationals – since Grandstand‘s nadir around the turn of the millennium – shudder at Hazel Irvine introducing an afternoon of “extreme winter sports” in 2002 – but the product remained fatally flawed.

This, of course, is a shame. Thanks to what was for a long time the most ambitious programme the BBC showed regularly, up to five hours long, even more on Cup Final day with the obligatory Cup Final It’s a Knockout et al, we got the Reithian lot – entertainment, education, information (and Arthur Ellis’ dipstick). Social habits for decades dictated that most sporting events took place on Saturday afternoons and thus this was a show scheduled to be a winner. Even if you were off to a match at 3pm you could always catch the boxing or the 1.15pm from Haydock, or highlights of a Grand Prix, wonder if Ludmilla Tourischeva, Nelli Kim, Nadia Comaneci or Olga Korbut was the more fanciable on the asymmetric bars and ask yourself the difference between an ice skater’s triple salchow and triple toe loop. That way you could get something watchable and then bugger off and miss Wakefield Trinity against Dewsbury, a Calcutta Cup bootfest at Twickers and/or indoor athletics from RAF Cosford.

Ah, Saturday. Who remembers the Saturday Wimbledon men’s finals? Grandstand was there; Arthur Ashe’s dismantling of Jimmy Connors in 1975, John McEnroe’s mano-a-mano epic with Bjorn Borg in 1980 and the pair’s underrated 1981 rematch. For anyone under 60, Grandstand almost was sport. The Beeb even published a Grandstand annual. I know; I’ve got one.

Skip this litany if you want, but any mosaic of popular postwar British culture must feature the following; Don Fox missing the beneath-the-posts shoo-in penalty in the 1968 Rugby League Challenge Cup final (‘He’s missed it! He’s missed it!!! eeeh, the poor lad’ )… Red Rum overhauling Crisp in the final furlongs of the 1973 National … Clive Lloyd’s blunderbuss of a bat pulverising the Australian bowling in the inaugural cricket world cup final … 1966 and all that, then the joyous Wembley pitch invasion by victorious Scottish fans 11 years later … the macabre horrors of Bradford and Hillsborough overtaking all other events in a horrid crescendo to become the only story on the show … Gareth Edwards plunging over for the Barbarians against the All Blacks. Most vivid of all; the then-radical decision to open the Grandstand of 30 October 1974 not with the conventional opening sequence but with Muhammad Ali foghorning into the camera, “Lissen! Attenshun!” to announce his astounding victory over George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle. Harry Carpenter’s piercing shriek of, “Oh my God!!! He’s won the title back at 32!” from down a Zairean phoneline was as heartfelt, and as compelling a piece of TV reportage as Eddie Waring’s reporting of Don Fox’s calvary.

In other words, not quite all – but plenty – of human life was there. Grandstand was classic TV because by definition it was the mediator of some of the great sporting, and therefore human, dramas of our time.

What went wrong, and when, is hard to pinpoint. More flexible scheduling of key events (tennis, football, cricket), often geared to US and satellite companies’ demands, and secularised attitudes loosened up leisure habits, enabling sporting events to take place on Sundays, changed things. Irrevocably, Saturday afternoon became a less iconic timeframe in the consumption of sport; the fragmentation of the Premier League’s fixture list to suit Sky’s rapacious demands proves that. This year’s fabulous BDO World Darts Championship final – some of the most exciting sports telly in years – between Martin Adams and Phill Nixon took place on a Sunday, as did one of TV sport’s iconic events, the 1985 Davis-Taylor World Snooker final. Things fell apart, the centre couldn’t etc – plus, the governing bodies of sports became greedier, less biddable, whorish. They wanted money for their product and then some. The BBC, and Grandstand, weren’t often forthcoming enough and things fell apart even more.

Saving graces: the Derby moved to Saturday but audiences declined; the Wimbledon ladies’ final also went the way of Saturday, allowing for the unforgettable 1993 footage of Czech tennis player Jana Novotna heartbrokenly weeping in defeat on the shoulder of the Duchess of Kent (Jana’s eventual final triumph, equally tearful, on Centre Court in 1998 is less well-remembered). Grandstand sadly didn’t benefit much.

The show became anodyne, not that it had ever attempted to be much else. Always coveting the mantle and bearing of the self-righteous gentleman than the honest pro, and aware of circling competitors newly out for blood, it sucked up royally to the vanities of corporate and individual interests. There was not even the pretence of serious sports journalism or humour, as, say, James Richardson’s Football Italia managed to combine so successfully in the 1990s. Attempts at hipness just looked affected and absurd (see above).

In the 1970s, the Corporation had deferred scrapingly to the patrician and sometimes aristocratic elements of equestrianism and tennis (and Football Focus, originally a Grandstand feature, was, and remains, massively in hock to soccer’s vested interests), but the show as a whole offset this fawning with working-class sports (darts, rugby league, snooker). But boy, did it have action. Great moments such as those cited above made the toadying to the likes of “horse trials” at Badminton and Burleigh (remember them?) bearable, but by the late 1980s and the haemorrhaging of events, these were becoming fewer and farther between. The commentating characters and frontmen, the voices of their sports, left; Eddie Waring died. Bill McLaren retired to his beloved border country, John Arlott to car-less Sark and a bottomless wine-cellar. Sid Waddell took Murdoch’s shilling, Richie Benaud C4′s. Graduates of BBC training schemes, whose voices are accentless and therefore “inclusive”, moved in. The vacuously fragrant – God help us – Sue Barker cast her shadow. Moreover, reporting of foreign events, and general sports news fell away.

For example, in the late 1970s Al Geiburger, a very good but now all-but-forgotten American golfer, shot a round of 59 in a reasonably important US tournament. In terms of difficulty this phenomenal achievement roughly equates to teaching calculus to a dromedary. Grandstand dutifully reported Geiburger’s feat. By 1990, though, it would not have done. Admittedly, even by then, multi-channel TV and Teletext were helping to reshape people’s consumption of sports news much as the internet has moved things on again. But as a show of putative reportage, and which employs broadcasters who would describe themselves as journalists (rather than the pithier sobriquets the cynical might use for the likes of John Motson), Grandstand had a remit, a responsibility to mention the feats and farces of sport. It ducked that responsibility.

Until the advent of the excellent Observer Sport Monthly magazine in 2000, Britain was the only developed western country lacking a sports periodical with intelligence and journalistic integrity. That mag’s success was probably built on public disgust at Grandstand‘s decline.

Example two. Many of the all-time great boxers – mid-1980s colossi like Thomas Hearns and Marvin Hagler – were rarely seen on Grandstand, not even as edited highlights. Even Sugar Ray Leonard’s best years didn’t feature. No viewer of the show in 2007 would have much idea of who even fine British fighters like Ricky Hatton and Joe Calzaghe are if they depended on it for their fix of fisticuffs, let alone the likes of recent icons of the ring like Roy Jones Jr and Oscar de la Hoya. A situation quite unthinkable even 25 years ago. Years went by, and there was little imagination or innovation; brief populist dalliances evangelising hockey and rowing failed. Nothing to fill the void caused by ITV and satellite competition surfaced. Where was, for example, a profile of post-apartheid South African football? The Jamaican bobsleighers of Cool Runnings fame? Whatever happened to Cuban heavyweight Teo Stevenson or Russia’s ice-skating pair Rodnina and Zaitsev?

But no. Grandstand was by now moribund, tied to what it imagined to be its staple diet, and not even doing that as well as it did.

Except for one sport.

Athletics, from the mid-1980s onwards, infected Grandstand to the extent that it has colonised the host body like a virus. Onetime frontman David Coleman was once an exceptionally undistinguished Staffordshire Harrier, which doesn’t explain quite why the last Saturday Grandstand featured extensive coverage of a meaningless indoor meet and for the last two decades has been dominated by the sport, at which Great Britain is now an also-ran. No matter; Grandstand ventriloquized buttock-clenchingly obvious nepotism and backscratching; the entire athletics onscreen staff are little more than cheerleaders for ex and current mates within the GB team (excepting the admirable Michael Johnson who, by the way, has a voice that makes Barry White sound like Jeremy Spake and whose frankness clearly discomfits our luvvies of the track). This ignores the irrefutable fact of these mates’ sheer uselessness at running, jumping or standing still.

That the BBC sport team appeared in a publicity photograph some years ago wearing tracksuits sponsored by ViewFrom – a company in which its employee and athletics commentator, the former runner Brendan Foster had a substantial interest – just about summed up a sinking culture.

The end of Grandstand won’t be the end of great sport on TV – Adams and Nixon proved that in two hours – and to get sentimental about it is silly. We’ll still be thrilled, chilled; we’ll laugh and cry and try and put a boot through the screen (not all at the same time, but you get my drift). But the interment of Grandstand into the TV vaults should be marked with more respect; in terms of its scope and place in popular cultural history, the amount of labour and professionalism invested in it over nearly five decades, Grandstand, multiple imperfections and all (even David Coleman pretending to take a phone call on air), surely deserves more than the paupers’ grave to which it was hastily consigned, without dignity or ceremony, last Sunday.

I’m not going to rehash the arguments I used last time I blogged about this, but it’s interesting to read the responses on the BBC Sport blog, where the posts generally fall into two camps: a few people who recognise that all it effectively means is the end of a (truly great) theme tune; and the rest who seem to view it as the destruction of all they hold dear about England. I particularly liked the poster who lamented the fact that there’d be no more World Cup Grandstand, even though they haven’t used that title since 1994.

But of course, for true professional Getting Grandstand Wrong, you have to turn to the press. The Daily Mail “broke” the story, with a piece which largely seems to consist of David Coleman mourning the fact that Grandstand isn’t allowed to cover news any more. Admittedly the piece does quote Des Lynam’s pragmatic response to the news, and acknowledges BBC Sport’s strides in interactive coverage, but rounds off with the line, “So farewell Grandstand. One can’t help thinking that Final Score could never come up with the romance of East Fife 4 Forfar 5.” Given that Final Scorewas always a part of Grandstand, this is essentially meaningless. Moreover, it’s 2007 and nobody cares about comedy Scottish football results.

On to the clueless Jim Shelley in The Mirror, lazily cobbling together a load of guff about how Grandstand used to cover “Wimbledon and the Grand National” (yeah, when was the last time you saw those on the BBC?), how ITV nicked the Premiership (nothing to do with Grandstand and the BBC got it back anyway) and how Grandstand was reduced to … yes, trampolining. To cap it all off, he appears to think the April Fool fight amongst the production team was real. Mind you, Jim Shelley probably thinks the swearing Rainbow Christmas tape is real.

Best of all is this clown, Tom Little in Scotland on Sunday, and his eulogy to the glory days when Grandstand showed everything from “top-level football to Grand Slam tennis and the big horse races to Five Nations rugby.” It takes some chutzpah to come up with that in a week when BBC Sport is covering, er, top-level football, Grand Slam tennis and Six Nations rugby.

For all that, it’ll still be weird to look in the TV guide on a Saturday afternoon and see “1.00 Rugby”. I suspect the world will still be spinning on its axis, though.

The writing has been on the wall since 2001, when Football Focus and Final Score became shows in their own right. In between, Grandstand has largely abandoned the compendium format of its heyday, and evolved into a programme devoted to one big event. The audience for a five-hour miscellany of sport in all its forms has all but disappeared. If you like snooker, you don’t want it interrupted by scrambling. And if you’re interested in football, you don’t want to wait until 4.40pm for the results, when you can watch the scores roll in all afternoon.

BBC1 will still be devoted to sport on Saturday afternoons, but it’s a pity that something practically everyone grew up with, even if they were only tuning in for Doctor Who, is about to disappear forever. The theme tune, the teleprinter, the pools news and the handwritten racing results … enduring images, as Ron Manager would say.

Moreover, the end of Grandstand just about sounds the death knell for the classic all-round sportscaster. In the old days, the programme would be anchored by the same presenter, week in, week out – Frank Bough, Des Lynam or Steve Rider – live from a buzzing Lime Grove studio full of typists. Now, if Grandstand is covering tennis, it’s Sue Barker, if it’s rugby union it’s John Inverdale, and if it’s snooker it’s Hazel Irvine. It seems a shame that we’ll probably not see the like of David Coleman or Harry Carpenter bestriding the sporting globe again.

I think watching Grandstand is one of my earliest television memories. I remember being hugely amused at a rugby team being called Bath.

However, the 10-hour time difference between the UK and Australia causes problems – most of the big events take place throughout the morning, when less people can get to a TV set. Therefore, the BBC have to strike a balance between live coverage for a very small audience, and a decent highlights package to allow the largest possible audience to see the big events. However, they can’t repeat the action over and over again, to avoid boring those who watched the events live. They also have to juggle the smaller events which the majority has little interest in but which are just as much a part of the games, and, of course, the normal BBC schedule.

Some stations would balk at this sort of responsibility, and indeed NBC in the US aren’t showing any live action from the games at all – as the big events take place at US-unfriendly times, they’re concentrating all their efforts into highlights packages. The BBC, though, can’t afford to take this stance, and have therefore come up with an exhaustive timetable. What’s interesting is the chance to see where the BBC Sport on-screen personnel feature in the pecking order. So Steve Rider and Sue Barker, as the senior presenters, appear in the mornings, from 7am, so they can cover all the big events in front of a decent sized audience. The daytime in Sydney, when most of the other live action takes place, is in the early hours of the morning (9am in Sydney being 11pm in the UK), so Hazel Irvine is responsible for bringing the events to a tiny audience.

John Inverdale and Steve Cram have what could be the best job on the team – they introduce the highlights package at 7pm each evening, which offers the best of the sport from the last 24 hours and the biggest audience of the day. They also have the job of presenting the coverage throughout the afternoon, which is one of the most curious parts of the schedule. When John and Steve start their shift at 1.45pm, it’s near midnight in Australia, and thus there’s little or no sport going on. The slot is therefore devoted to the events that occurred earlier in the day, but there was no time to cover – even with two channels at their disposal, it’s very hard to feature, say, live table tennis or judo when there’s swimming and athletics going on at the same time.

Tuesday was a good example, when Invers and Crammy (which is how we already know them) offered us an afternoon of boxing, weightlifting, badminton, beach volleyball, and sailing. None of these sports are likely to get a massive audience – excepting, perhaps, the beach volleyball – and there’s little chance of a medal for British competitors, but there are people who would like to see them. It’s no wonder that John started his stint on Monday afternoon by saying “You may not like handball at the moment, but you’ll be a fan before you know it”. Invers and Crammy are very good at admitting the events are obscure, but without belittling them – so often coverage is preceeded by short “Grandstand Guides”, useful explanations of the rules and who’s involved.

There’s a sort of laid-back feel to the whole afternoon, with John and Steve sparking off each other well – we can sympathise with the fact that it’s the middle of the night for them and they’re trying to get us excited over an afternoon of taekwondo. So e-mails are invited, with John saying that perhaps “students, if you’ve had your one lecture of the day” would like to get in touch. Steve asks for any comments on the low quality of John’s clothing. Later, an e-mail asked why so many swimming records were being broken in the games – Steve pledged to find out, but insisted that “it’s not because the pool goes downhill”.

John has been hyped as being “The new Des Lynam”, and indeed he has the same sort of affability, but he also seems to be cultivating a sort of buffoonish image – he’ll have trouble reading some results and Steve will step in to help out, or he’ll do a really bad pun and Steve will groan. Steve’s actually been more professional than you’d perhaps expect – the days linking boring athletics meets on Channel 4 have helped him immensely, and he can get over a lot of information with the minimum of fuss. It’s not hard to see The Invers And Crammy Show being the hit of the games, although later in the week Steve has to go and commentate on the athletics, and Clare Balding will be John’s new sidekick. Whether this will be as successful is hard to tell, but John certainly won’t do his TV career any harm with his display at these games.

You can make comparisons with the Winter Olympics in 1998, where Ray Stubbs and Jane Hoffen introduced the overnight coverage. This was anchored from London, and evident was the same laid-back style with the feeling they should be in bed and only a few thousand people were watching – especially when Ray and Jane found themselves introducing hours of curling each night. But again the enthusiasm for the games and the nicely targeted coverage meant that there was a loyal audience by the end.

The Olympic Games are always excellent fun, not just for the undoubted excellence of the competitors and the quality of the action, but also the range of sport that takes place. The BBC deserves praise for the depth and the range of it’s coverage – for a fortnight, weightlifting is not the poor relation of football and athletics, it’s covered with enthusiasm and respect by the production team and a medal winner in this event is heralded as a great athlete. The Olympics are still unique in this idea, and in broadcasting terms, so, it seems, are the BBC.