Athletics in the UK: The Rise and Fall of the BAF

98 Athletics and television The ITV contract was shared with Channel 4 (where the head of sport was former Olympic athlete Adrian Metcalfe) and Bromley appointed Richard Russell as executive director of athletics with the remit to handle the day to day relationships with the sport. From the outset, Russell would attend meetings of the Joint Standing Committee which met quite frequently and this was supplemented by occasional “get to know you” dinners which Bromley and Metcalfe would attend. This arrangement continued for the first year or so of the contract but gradually changed into more focused professional meetings, often including Alan Pascoe, as Andy Norman, Malcolm Jones and I assumed greater responsibility for the day to day management of the events and the contracts. ITV had invested heavily in athletics and needed a commercial return and it should not be overlooked that the full cost to them was far more than the rights fees as athletics is one of the most complicated sports for television to broadcast effectively. ITV had, at least, to match the expertise and reputation for quality of the BBC and the costs of production were as much again as the rights fees. If ITV could not justify the cost of its investment in athletics by the advertising revenue it could attract (this, in turn, depending crucially on the numbers of viewers), a renewal of the contract after five years would not be guaranteed. Would the BBC have welcomed athletics back with a generous offer in such circumstances? Norman, Jones and I, if not many others in the sport, were acutely conscious of these imperatives and of the need to constantly achieve quality events in order to satisfy the paymasters. The relationship with Bromley and Russell was excellent and Bromley never took advantage of the powerful position over the sport that, in reality, he knew he had secured. The key person in delivering the events was Andy Norman. It was his influence, above all, and his effective promotion of AAA events that created the climate that led ITV to lust after the athletics contract and it then fell to Andy Norman to deliver, time and again, the events that kept ITV interested. He did not suffer fools gladly and was feared and admired in equal measure. He had cultivated everyone of importance in world athletics from the IAAF President Primo Nebiolo down but, at the same time, sowed the seeds of his own eventual downfall.