The Big Match

"The Big Match" is a British football television programme, which screened on ITV regularly between 1968 and 1992 (the last four years were under the title "The Match"), and less regularly after that.

"The Big Match" originally launched on London Weekend Television, the ITV regional station that served London and the Home Counties, screening highlights of Football League matches. Other ITV regions had their own shows, but would show "The Big Match" if they were not covering their own match - particularly often in the case of Southern and HTV. The programme was set up in part as a response to the increased demand in televised football following the 1966 FIFA World Cup and partly as an alternative to the BBC's own football programme, "Match of the Day". "The Big Match" launched the media career of Jimmy Hill, who appeared on the programme as an analyst, and made Brian Moore one of the country's leading football commentators.

"The Big Match" originally screened match highlights on Sunday afternoons (while "Match of the Day" screened them on Saturday evenings) but in 1978 ITV audaciously won exclusive rights to all league football coverage, in a move termed "Snatch of the Day". Although the Monopolies and Mergers Commission blocked the move, the BBC were forced to allow ITV to take over the Saturday night slot in alternating seasons, starting in 1980.

Live era

ITV's regional-based coverage of football ended in 1983, with "The Big Match" becoming the sole football highlights programme on ITV. That same year, the first live league match since 1960 was shown, a First Division game between Tottenham Hotspur and Nottingham Forest which Tottenham won 2-1. ITV's football coverage continued and expanded throughout the 1980s, particularly after ITV finally won exclusive league rights in 1988, after which "The Big Match" was renamed simply "The Match". Much of the coverage focused on the destiny of the First Division title, most memorably on May 26 1989 when Arsenal's decisive and dramatic 2–0 win at Liverpool won them the championship by the narrowest of margins at their opponents' expense.

After ITV lost rights to the new FA Premier League to BSkyB and the BBC in 1992, regular screening of the programme stopped. The final top-flight match shown live on ITV was Liverpool's 2-0 win over Manchester United on 26 April 1992, a result that sealed the title for Leeds United.

Modern era

ITV did gain coverage of the new UEFA Champions League, but all programmes covering that competition went out under the "UEFA Champions League" title. Through the 1990s, ITV covered highlights of the League Cup, and between 1997 and 2001 had the rights to show the FA Cup, both as highlights and live; from the start of FA Cup coverage at the beginning of 1998, ITV revived the name "The Big Match" for their football coverage. When ITV won back Premier League highlights in 2001, the new programme was however, simply called "The Premiership".

The Big Match Revisited

On February 7 2008, ITV4 began showing old editions of The Big Match in its various regional and national forms on a Thursday afternoon, hoping to cash in on the sports TV nostalgia revival headed by the ESPN Classic channel. Each edition was from the same week 25 years earlier. The series ran until May 15 2008, coinciding with the end of the 1982–83 season. The programme mainly showed "The Big Match" but occasionally aired editions from Granada Television ("Match Time") and Television South ("The Saturday Match") instead. In the 1990s, a similar show called "The Big Match Replayed" was shown late at night on ITV, repeating various editions of The Big Match from the 1970s.

References

*cite web
url=http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/BigMatch.html
title=The Big Match (ITV Football Highlights 1968-1983)
*cite web
url=http://www.students.ncl.ac.uk/john.bourn/
title=History of Football on ITV
author=Bourn, John
*cite web
url=http://www.reminiscethis.co.uk/bigmatch.htm
title=The Big Match: A Sunday Treat
work=Reminisce This
*cite web
url=http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/sport/sport-itv.html
title=ITV Sport idents
work=TV Ark