Top > Sport > 2006 > April > 2006-04-26

BBC Flagship Sports Show Comes to an End

BBC`s flagship sports show, Grandstand, is taken off BBC`s schedule after airing for almost half a century. Director Mark Thompson is due to announce the upcoming change while giving a review of BBC`s output. 2009 will be the last year for the show, which ran for 48 years, but sports will still be featured on Saturday afternoons.

The project is aimed at making sure the BBC`s programming and content meets the challenges of the digital, on-demand world. Sports programming on Saturday afternoon originally ran within Grandstand but in recent years coverage has been broken down into individual programme segments, such as Football Focus. This year`s coverage of the Winter Olympics and Commonwealth Games were shown without the Grandstand banner.

Grandstand has been presented by the likes of Frank Bough, David Coleman, Des Lynam and Steve Rider. Lynam said: "I`m saddened in many ways but the decision was inevitable." In the 50s and 60s, people were prepared to sit down and watch live action for four or five hours no matter what it was. However, those days are gone. In a multi-channel age, if people are going to watch live sport, it has to be a pretty big event.