This is the fourth and last part of Best Sports Themes. Today, we’re focusing on sports anthologies such as ABC’s Wide World of Sports, CBS Sports Spectacular, NBC SportsWorld and the like.
We’ll start this with the original sports anthology program, Wide World of Sports. It’s cut off, but it’s pretty cool to see iconic athletes such as Franz Klammer, Pele, Mario Andretti and of course, representing the Agony of Defeat, Vinko Bogataj the ski jumper on the intro.This is from 1978 and the quality isn’t very good.
By 1996, Wide World was appearing less frequently as ESPN was taking over ABC Sports, but we did get a short version of the intro.
Going back to 1983, here’s the ending of Wide World and you have the theme played in full.
And here’s an intro which is a little longer, but again the theme plays out.
Finally, here’s a promo for Wide World of Sports dating back to the 1970’s. I wish they used this music for the show.
In 1973, CBS decided to create its own anthology called the CBS Sports Spectacular. It still runs today, but not really in the same format as back then. Anyway, here’s the theme from 1979 and I like this version. This is Emerson, Lake and Palmer. For 1977-1978, they used Electric Light Orchestra’s Fire on High.
NBC tried a couple of anthologies, one called Grandstand in 1975, but it didn’t work. Then it tried again in 1977 with SportsWorld and that through the late 1980’s. This is the theme for the program.
And one which you probably didn’t see unless you lived in the UK. This is BBC Grandstand which ran from 1958 until 2007. This theme is very familiar to British sports fans. This person loved the theme so much, he tacked four different openings during the period of 1993 through 1998.
Because I can, I’ll post the final BBC Grandstand opens. This is the last Grandstand Saturday open with Hazel Irvine as the host.
Finally, this is the final BBC Sport Grandstand as presented by Claire Balding. Kind of interesting to see how BBC presented their programs.
So that does it for the Best Sport Themes. For past versions, you can check out my original effort which featured NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and college football and a follow-up on the same day. Part II had NFL pregame shows, college basketball and soccer. And Part III focused on golf and tennis.
Next week, I’ll focus on the Worst Sports Themes and there are quite a few.
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