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Sports Report

British sports radio programme

Summary

British sports radio programme

Field	Value
name	Sports Report
format	Sports news and results
runtime	30–60 minutes
country	United Kingdom
language	English
home_station
presenter	Mark Chapman
first_aired
last_aired
opentheme	"Out of the Blue" by Hubert Bath
website

Sports Report is one of the longest-running programmes on British radio, and is the world's longest-running sports radio programme. It started on 3 January 1948, and has always been broadcast from 17:00 on Saturday evenings during the football season, for most of its history featuring two readings of the classified football results, although the length of the programme has varied in more recent times depending on whether the BBC has a commentary of a 17:30 Premier League match.

Originally produced by Angus Mackay, it was broadcast on the BBC Light Programme until 25 April 1964. On 22 August 1964 it became part of Sports Service and moved to Network Three (which later became BBC Radio 3) where it initially started at the earlier time of 16:42. On 4 April 1970, however, it moved back to what had by then become BBC Radio 2, where it remained until 25 August 1990 as part of Sport on 2. From 1 September 1990 to 26 March 1994 it moved to the original BBC Radio 5, and since 2 April 1994 it has been broadcast on BBC Radio 5 Live as part of 5 Live Sport.

In February 1969 Mary Raine was sent to report on the Chelsea–Sunderland league game for Sports Report, becoming the first woman to report on sport for the BBC.

The start of the 2022–23 English football season saw the axing of the Saturday afternoon classified football results without prior warning or fanfare. This was confirmed on 8 August 2022 when the BBC announced it had dropped the results from the programme because it had been shortened ahead of the 17:30 Premier League match.

Presenters

Raymond Glendenning (1948–53)
Stephen Grenfell (1948–53)
W J (Bill) Hicks (Sports Editor and broadcaster)
Eamonn Andrews (1950–64)
Robin Marlar (1964–68)
Liam Nolan (1965–66)
Peter Jones (1968–70)
Des Lynam (1970–80)
Mike Ingham (1980–85)
Renton Laidlaw (1985–87)
John Inverdale (1987–94)
Ian Payne (1994–2000)
Mark Pougatch (2000–2016)
Mark Chapman (2016–present)

Classified football results announcers

John Webster (1948–1974)
James Alexander Gordon (1974–2013)
Charlotte Green (2013–2022)

Theme tune

The programme has used the same theme music since its inception – "Out of the Blue", written by Hubert Bath. It is said that Lynam prevented the theme from being dropped in the 1970s due to it sounding old-fashioned.

The use of the closing part of "Out of the Blue" to end the programme was unceremoniously dropped by the BBC in the mid-2000s.

On Saturday 5 January 2013, Sports Report did not open with "Out of the Blue" for the first time, prompting a string of tweets and presenter Mark Pougatch to tweet shortly afterwards that:

"Out of the Blue" was subsequently played an hour later.

References

(1955). "Sports Report". Sportsmans Book Club.
(1987). "Sports Report: 40 Years of the Best". [[Queen Anne Press]].
(20 August 1964). "Sports Service". [[BBC Publications]].
(2 April 1970). "Sports Report". [[BBC Publications]].
(29 May 2019). "Female Football Pioneers: Mary Raine and Patricia Gregory".
(8 August 2022). "BBC Radio 5 Live drops classified football results". BBC.
(8 August 2022). "Classified football scores end on BBC Radio 5 Live".
(19 August 2014). "Obituary: James Alexander Gordon". The Daily Telegraph.
(28 September 2013). "Charlotte Green makes BBC football results debut". BBC News.
(5 January 2018). "Sports Report at 70: Presenters' memories, royal recognition & THAT theme tune". BBC Sport.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

bbc-light-programme-programmes bbc-radio-2-programmes bbc-radio-5-live-programmes british-sports-radio-programmes 1948-radio-programme-debuts 1940s-british-radio-programmes 1950s-british-radio-programmes 1960s-british-radio-programmes 1970s-british-radio-programmes 1980s-british-radio-programmes 1990s-british-radio-programmes 2000s-british-radio-programmes 2010s-british-radio-programmes 2020s-british-radio-programmes

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