Today’s Sport on Your Screen Tonight: Sports Special and Match of the Day

Abstract

The BBC’s relationship with the football authorities had been gradually developed throughout the 1920s and 30s as negotiations to provide access for live running commentaries of games required diplomacy on the part of broadcasters to overcome the bloody-mindedness of football administrators. The intransigence on the part of club chairmen, and especially the Football League Management Committee, was born of the fact that unlike newsreel film, radio broadcasting could be live, as it happened, and was therefore a direct threat as a competing form of entertainment. The BBC’s first director of outside broadcasting, Gerald Cock, continually pushed the public service line that broadcasting opened up access to football for those who could not attend matches, such as the blind and infirm. Live commentaries also served another public function of promoting the game to new audiences, especially female listeners who were tuning in with the rest of the family. There was commercial compensation too, but the amounts were fairly modest. Cock and his successor de Lotbiniére resisted the payment of excessive facilities fees, mainly because commercial payments ran contrary to the BBC’s ideological public purpose. Concessions were, however, made by both the BBC and the Football Association to ensure the public could hear running commentaries of major football events such as FA Cup matches and internationals. The Football League, and many club chairmen, had remained suspicious of the BBC from the outset. The old concern that broadcasts affected attendances was always foregrounded in their negotiations. The acceptance of selected commentaries on the Empire Service paved the way for stronger personal relations between outside broadcasting staff and the League. By the outbreak of war, Fred Howarth, the indomitable Secretary of the League, was converted to the power of radio to provide interest in the game by de Lotbiniére’s charm offensive and shrewd negotiations in the late-1930s. Although the BBC were restricted in promoting football broadcasts prior to the event, football became a standard feature of the post-war broadcasting landscape during the autumn and winter months.¹