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

107 The end of a beautiful friendship? By coincidence, I was to be in London at a BAF meeting the following day and agreed to call in to see Burrows and East after the meeting. This I did and, at 6.30pm, found a dispirited Burrows and East with little to offer except a consoling glass or two and mutual commiserations. After half an hour or so of desultory conversation, I asked if Director of Programmes Marcus Plantin was still there and, if so, could I see him. Plantin joined the group and defended the decision on cost grounds. I complained that athletics had been treated badly after reaching a good faith understanding with Burrows and East and demanded a formal meeting with Andrew Quinn, the Chief Executive. I had argued that to pull the plug on athletics in such a brutal fashion after a nine year relationship would be as damaging to ITV’s reputation as to athletics’. Admittedly, this was something of a bluff but it did the trick and, following some tense meetings with Quinn, a stay of execution was negotiated: ITV would continue until the end of 1994, thus giving athletics time to make new arrangements for the future - if it could. Inevitably, news of the spat crept into the open and John Bromley, in one of his occasional articles in the Daily Telegraph , described it thus: “On hearing this news (the pulling of the plug), Lister and Norman marched on the ITV Centre in London‟s Grays Inn Road. ITV‟s two top programme bosses, Andrew Quinn and Marcus Plantin, found themselves in a fierce argument, with the aggressive Norman in full flow. The word “trust” was used on several occasions. “The result of that angry exchange is that the ITV bosses had a rethink and will come back with an offer to extend the present contract by just one year, with a fee of around £1 million for the four domestic events. “Norman and Lister will then have to judge this scenario: take an unsatisfactory one-year deal with ITV which would deliver four peak time slots – and thus excite the sponsors – or go walk-about again and attempt to persuade Channel Four or the BBC to give them a four year deal with not so much money but a secure future.” In reality, the sport had no choice as we had already talked to both the BBC and Channel Four as well as the fledgling Sky and knew that a comprehensive deal with either broadcaster was not an option at that point in time. BBC had offered a three year deal to cover the AAA championships but it was too soon for them to go further. The obvious