How Bernie Influenced Our Sunday TV Viewing Habits

SUNDAY MAY 7 1978. IT’S THE DAY OF the Monaco Grand Prix, and for British television viewers it happened in an unrecognisable broadcasting landscape.

- Edd Straw

The date is significant because, had you switched on BBC2 at 2250, perhaps after watching the second episode of the historical drama The Devil’s Crown, you would have been able to watch the first installment of what became the long running Grand Prix programme.

To today’s audience, at least for those with fewer than four decades under their belts, this was an alien world. For while you couldn’t watch the full race live earlier in the day, there were a couple of segments of the race shown on the ITV show World of Sport. ITV also popped up later in the year showing the Swedish GP from Anderstorp, while most races appeared on the BBC.

So why all this talk of 1978? After all, grands prix had enjoyed television coverage for many years, albeit patchily, since it wasn’t until James Hunt’s title success in ’76 that UK broadcasters started to take it more seriously (although the first proper broadcast was apparently the 1953 British GP). Well the answer is, simply, Bernie Ecclestone.