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

105 The end of a beautiful friendship? ITV contract, it was quite common to see viewing figures of 7 million or more. Indeed, the Peugeot Talbot Games held at Crystal Palace stadium in 1985 generated 8.5m on the first day and a massive 11m on the second of the two day event. An indoor event typically generated 3 or 4m viewers. The weaker events were quickly exposed, however, and, in 1986, the Scottish Championships were broadcast only in Scotland and watched by a mere 0.3m. Likewise, road races were not producing consistently good figures. On the whole, however, ITV was satisfied with the statistics in the early years of the contract. By 1991 the figures were sliding. The flagship London Grand Prix (now called the TSB Grand Prix, a new sponsor having replaced Peugeot) generated 7.5m viewers for the first hour on ITV and 4.55m on Channel 4 for the second hour. In 1992, the figures drifted to 6.7m and 4.4m respectively and the declining viewing figures became a topic of debate at every meeting between the sport’s representatives and ITV. It needs to be realised that ITV Sport was fighting an internal battle to maintain airtime against populist programmes such as Coronation Street, The Bill and others; programmes that, in those days, regularly attracted viewing figures in excess of 16 or even 20 million. It was accepted that most sports could not hope to compete and win against such opposition and ITV had a statutory duty to produce a balanced schedule of programmes. Nevertheless, as a commercial operation, the programme planners of ITV could hardly be expected to smile benignly on a sport that, as they saw it, was too expensive to justify and was occupying prime time slots at the most popular viewing times. Viewing figures directly affected advertising income so the most popular programmes should logically occupy the most popular viewing times. And this was all against a background where the ITV franchises had expired at the end of 1992 and the Thatcher Government had decided to put the new franchises to auction. Thus, most of the new franchise holders had paid heavily to secure their rights and needed to maximise revenue to warrant their investments. Where could athletics fit into this? What quickly became clear was that, with John Bromley’s influence gone, athletics would have to justify itself commercially to the new regime and the first meeting with new Chief Executive Andrew Quinn made this brutally clear when the sport was informed that athletic events would be downgraded to a thirty minute slot only. Up until this time, the