Ski Sunday

"Ski Sunday" is the BBC Sports weekly magazine-style television show covering winter sports, broadcast in the United Kingdom on Sundays in an early evening time-slot.

History

Originally launched in the late 1970s on the back of the 1976 Winter Olympics, later forming part of "Sunday Grandstand" and presented and commentated on by British broadcasting luminaries such as Ron Pickering and David Vine (who presented the show for 20 years until he took semi-retirement in 1996), the show focused primarily on the blue riband events of downhill skiing and Super G. Following the final edition of "Grandstand" in early 2007, "Ski Sunday" became one of the longest-running BBC Sports television programmes still being broadcast; the 2008 season is the 30th.

Format

As the British appetite for alpine skiing changed over time, the programme has experimented with different formats and time-slots. In recent years the show has been presented by, amongst others, Hazel Irvine, Matt Chilton, former British Olympic skier Graham Bell and Ed Leigh. The 2008 season started 20 January in an extended prime time slot (Sundays 7pm to 8pm GMT) and was broadcast weekly on BBC2 for eight weeks. The revised format covers most forms of competition skiing and snowboarding as well as covering travelogue and entertainment features. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2007/12_december/17/ski.shtml Revamped Ski Sunday returns to BBC Two] , BBC, 17 December 2007] The series also offers BBCi interactive features via the red button.

Theme tune

The iconic theme music to the programme, "Pop Looks Bach" by Sam Fonteyn (born Samuel Soden), has changed very little over the years and is well-known to the British public. It has been re-mixed and sampled many times over. The music has also become the theme tune for the BBC's coverage of the Winter Olympics. In the US, the religion-oriented radio show "The World Tomorrow" used the "Ski Sunday" theme as its opening music during the 1980s. It was first recorded for the Boosey & Hawkes Music Library in 1970, and was not written for the BBC. It has similarities to the opening of Bach's famous Fugue in D minor.

References

External links

*bbc.co.uk|id=wintersports|title=Winter Sports

Video clips

* [http://youtube.com/watch?v=GL6OhY4896w 2008 intro]

Audio clips

* [http://www.derby.org/wheaty/BT1209/Pop_Looks_Bach.mp3 "Pop Looks Bach"] by the New Dance Orchestra
* [http://www.chameleon-arts.co.uk/Mp3/DutBand/Yorkshire%20Imperial%20Urquhart%20Travel%20Band%20-%20Pop%20Looks%20Bach.wma Theme Tune] performed by the [http://www.yorkshireimps.co.uk/recordings.asp Yorkshire Imperial Brass Band]