Talking Sport - 90 Years of Commentary

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2017

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It is 90 years since the first BBC football commentary on radio from a wooden hut in Highbury, England. It brought sports to a much bigger audience and revolutionised overnight our relationship with our favourite games. Nine decades on and sports commentary is a multi-billion dollar business. Icelandic commentator Gudmundur Benediktsson tells the story of how sports commentary developed in different parts of the world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the BBC World Service.
0:03.0	Football fans among you might just remember me or at least
0:14.5	remember this from the europe.
0:17.0	The kang Tani Rose, I always said that we're going to kill me if he's
0:20.8	yota, yontay, Colpeta, Kolta, Kolta!
0:24.0	I just couldn't help myself.
0:28.0	We had beat in England 2-1, and of course I was going to shout and scream.
0:33.2	It was a huge moment in Icelandic history after all.
0:36.8	But I'm not the first to get caught up in the moment.
0:39.6	Remember this guy?
0:40.8	Sir Winston Churchill, Lady Diana, Maggie Thatcher, can you hear me?
0:47.0	Your boys took a hell of a beating.
0:49.9	I am Goodminder Benedictson and over the next hour we are going to celebrate nine decades of commentary.
0:55.9	This is Talking Sport 90 years of commentary on the BBC World Service.
1:02.4	It was January the 22nd, 1927 and in a little hut, which looked
1:07.6	more like a garden shed, the BBC pioneered its first full radio commentary of a league football match. It was for the
1:14.8	Division I class between Arsenal and Sheffield United at the Highbury ground in
1:18.7	North London and it became the first league match in which fans got a chance to listen to a game from the comfort of their own home.
1:26.0	The BBC had just been given their Royal Assent to broadcast live from sporting events.
1:31.0	Professor Richard Haines is an academic specializing in media at the University of
1:36.4	Stirling in Scotland.
1:37.7	The week before they'd done a broadcast from a rugby union game.
	...

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