Back in 1954, the Guardian devoted a single sentence to the inaugural BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards. Nineteen words, altogether, more than I’ve spent in making it even this far into discussing the 2015 edition. “CJ Chataway, who was voted by the viewers the sporting personality of the year, received the television ‘Sportsview’ Trophy.” It ran on page 10, at the tail-end of a caption underneath a photo of both Chataway and Roger Bannister, who had won the Daily Record’s Sportsman of the Year award that same evening, and who was given top billing. Earlier that year, Bannister had broken the four‑minute mile, one of the great sporting achievements of the century. But it was Chataway who won the BBC’s gong, because he had recently set a 5,000m world record in a race televised live from White City.
It seems Spoty has always been weighted towards those whose deeds are free to see on the BBC. Perversely, the Guardian and the rest of the press decided the Chataway v Bannister scandal wasn’t worth covering in any depth. Or, indeed, at all. Instead, the sports pages carried county hockey reports. Surrey 4, Cheshire 3. By the following year, the Guardian had cottoned on, and gave the second edition of the show its very own paragraph, tacked on to the end of a review of a radio documentary about the NHS. The programme, the critic noted, was “altogether a trifle odd” because “the packed room of sporting personalities did not seem to attend to the speeches of the two trophy-winners with much interest, and the BBC presentation was passed over with scant notice”.
Almost as if everyone there agreed that a televised personality contest wasn’t worth getting worked up about. Somewhere along the way in the last 60 years, Spoty seems to have become a matter of utmost seriousness, the source now of annual scandals about the selections, the snubs and the worthiness of the winners. A matter, in fact, fit for political debate, with the BBC director general, Tony Hall, hauled in to face the culture, media and sport select committee to explain away Tyson Fury’s inclusion on the shortlist, and Fury himself publicly challenged by the Labour MPs Chris Bryant and Chuka Umunna. Less play has been made, oddly, of early day motion 798, submitted by the Conservative MP David Morris on 1 December. “This House congratulates Tyson Fury on being crowned Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World.”
Fury’s astonishing achievement is overshadowed now by the fact that, to borrow Clive Myrie’s phrase, most people think he’s “a dickhead”. Fury says he is “anything but straightforward”, that he takes pride in embodying “awkwardness to the utmost, highest level”, so sounds tailor-made for a live interview in prime time. Interesting to see, too, whether the presenters’ chats with Mo Farah include much discussion of the BBC’s Panorama investigation into his coach Alberto Salazar and his close friend and training partner Galen Rupp. Or if Greg Rutherford will be asked if he still considers UK Athletics “more of a hindrance than a help”. Or if Chris Froome will talk in any depth about how it feels to be accused of doping, or his decision to release his physiological data to try to persuade people he is clean. There is a fascinating show to be made here, only Spoty isn’t it.
The 2014 awards included, among other things, interviews with athletes about their pets, a live performance by Simple Minds, a section showcasing the comedy stylings of Hacker T Dog, and repeated cutaway shots to Susan Boyle, who seemed to be having a tremendous time. The eventual winner, Lewis Hamilton, had his own six‑minute segment that didn’t include even a single clip from a single race he’d competed in that year. Instead viewers were treated to a prerecorded video that presented him ambling around a computer-generated set, waffling on from a nonsensical script. “It’s a complicated business, but simple. You have a car. And then the car was amazing. You have us. Us against the rest. Me against him. So we race.”
It felt, in short, like a show designed to appeal to people who don’t like sport. Like Wimbledon 2day, broadcast live from the Gatsby Club, panned, then canned, after the BBC were deluged with complaints that their tennis highlights show didn’t include the one thing people were tuning in to see – the day’s play. Seems unlikely that the Gatsby Club business will figure much in the montages this year.
Also missing, most likely, will be any mention of the fact that in 2015 the BBC lost the broadcasting rights to the Olympics and half of the matches in the Six Nations, ditched the Open golf, and, according to reports, the Australian Open tennis, and the BDO World Darts Championship. Or that, as they look to make further savings,they are considering cutting their snooker coverage, Formula One coverage, and the red button service. Never mind. Here’s another montage.
Time was when Spoty was simply an excuse to sit on the sofa and watch a couple of hours of sports highlights. “Trifle odd” as the Guardian’s critic found the show in 1955, he did, at least, enjoy the bulk of its 75 minutes because they provided “a rapid and full review of the year’s sport”. Far too little of which, it seems, had been on the BBC first time around.
At times, the Observer noted, Sportsview, the programme which Spoty grew out of, was so desperately short of material that it had been reduced to broadcasting footage of the presenter Peter Dimmock conducting interviews over the phone, about British boxers fighting in New York. “We saw Dimmock nodding his head into the telephone,” complained their TV critic, “we saw pictures of the New York skyline. The rest was just sound, and not very good sound at that.” If this is the best the BBC can do, he suggested, they would do better to cut the talk and just show some more sport. Advice that would still serve them well today.
