Sports Report

If you want instant access to the latest football results, chances are you’ll have an app on your smartphone. But for years if you weren’t sitting in front on the telly on a Saturday afternoon the quickest way to hear the classifieds and sporting headlines was on Sports Report. Sports Report was the brain-child of BBC news producer Angus Mackay and it launched on the BBC Light Programme on Saturday 3 January 1948. Mackay instilled in his team a discipline for sports reporting that endures to this day. From 1950 to 1964 Sports Report became synonymous with the voice of Eamonn Andrews. The programme would eventually become part of a longer Saturday afternoon sports magazine: Sports Session then Sport on 2, Sport on 5 and now 5 Live Sport. In recent years Sports Report has at times being squeezed down to just 15 minutes to make way for the increase in live football commentaries and, as you’ll hear in this montage, even the famous Out of the Blue theme has been dropped. These clips come from Sports Reports edition broadcast on 30 October 1948, 23 January 1982, 5 January 2013 and 28 September 2013. The hosts are Stephen Grenfell, Mike Ingham, Mark Pougatch and Mark Chapman. Reading the classified football results are Robin Boyle, James Alexander Gordon and Charlotte Green.