On Sunday 21 January, commentary on the English premiership football match between Arsenal v Manchester United will be broadcast on both BBC Five Live and its digital sister station Five Live Sports Extra. That’s because Five Live Sports Extra version will be commemorating the 80th anniversary of football commentaries on the radio. The commentary from John Murray will utilise the original grid used in early football commentaries to trace the progress of the ball, with position calling from James Alexander Gordon at the match. That’s widely believed to be the origin of the phrase “back to square one”.
Those who prefer the standard, modern-day commentary can listen on Five Live. Unfortunately, for copyright reasons the commentary cannot be streamed on the Internet to listeners outside the UK.
Andy Sennitt comments: I actually have a copy of the Radio Times from those early days, with the grid printed in it. I assume the present-day Radio Times will print it too. It will be interesting to discover just how easy (or difficult) it is to follow a modern-day match using this system. The game as played 80 years ago was much slower. On Christmas Day, BBC Five Live carried a one-hour special programme hosted by Alan Green, appropriately called ‘Back to Square One’, looking back at the past 80 years of football commentaries. Unfortunately this programme does not appear on the list of downloadable programmes on the Five Live website, but maybe it will be added to tie in with the special commentary.
1 comment so far
1 Martin January 2nd, 2007 - 16:28 UTC
Monday 1st January 2007 is the anniversary of the BBC becoming a public
corporation. As in its name changed from being the British Broadcasting
Company to the British Broadcasting Corporation with a royal charter.
The charter is renewed every ten years.
First director general was John Reith.
You wont find much on the BBC website or news about this, possibly
because the mandarins who run the BBC these days couldn’t careless about such an event.
Leave a Comment