by A Question of Sport, the world’s longest-running TV sports quiz show, has been canceled by the BBC after viewers anticipated its controversial revamp.
The corporation confirmed it had no current plans to extend the show’s 53-year run after a series that ended in September “due to inflation and funding challenges”.
The decision comes three years after longest-serving host Sue Barker was dumped from the program along with veteran team captains Matt Dawson and Phil Tufnell.
An angry Barker, 67, later questioned whether her age played a role in the decision.
Former comedian Paddy McGuinness replaced her as part of the BBC’s “lurch to youth”, with Ugo Monye and Sam Quek as team captains.
But their two-year tenure saw their numbers dwindle from a high of four million in the final years of Barker’s reign to less than a million.
A BBC spokesman said: “Due to inflation and funding challenges, difficult decisions have to be made, so Question of Sport is not currently being shown.”
The corporation, which has the right to bring the show back in the future, has chosen to prioritize high-impact content that drives viewers to iPlayer.
The axing of A Question of Sport is the second major blow for McGuinness in the past month after Top Gear was shelved following a serious accident involving co-presenter Andrew Flintoff.
After a successful pilot in 1968, A Question of Sport began in 1970 with David Vine as host, followed by fellow sports commentator David Coleman before former tennis star Barker became the first female presenter in 1997.
The BBC has failed viewers by allowing A Question of Sport to rot
By Jeremy Wilson
Sports question deserved! After 53 years on the air, it’s news that comes with a certain shock value but, assuming you’re among the vast majority who stopped watching years ago, the adjustment to this new reality will be painless.
Many will have assumed that it had already been taken off the air. Most will probably say he should have been put out of his misery long ago. For A Question of Sport has been steadily dying since its peak in 1987 when Emlyn Hughes hit Princess Anne and David Coleman and Bill Beaumont played the straight men in front of 19 million people.
These were the days of a classic theme tune (no doubt later dumped with many of the BBC’s favourites), mini ‘banter’ and a semi-serious quiz show that was a must-see for any self-respecting sports fan.
It was the kind of program whose huge core of loyal fans could be truly grateful for the invention of the VHS recording.
Ian Botham would then do a sustainable job upholding the traditions alongside Beaumont and Coleman until the big sea change in 1996 when they were soon joined by John Parrott and Ally McCoist and Sue Barker.
It’s okay to be light if you have the people who can do it and, while Barker’s relationship with Parrott and McCoist was very doable, the subsequent Dettori/Dawson/Tufnell combos were long overdue. on the line between semi-funny and totally cringeworthy.
The questions themselves also began to feel less important as the contestants laughed out loud over and over again, regardless of whether anything particularly funny happened.
Undoubtedly a national treasure, at least Barker had huge gravitas as a presenter and the viewing figures were apparently still up to a very respectable four million when she was unceremoniously dumped as presenter in 2020.
This was always going to hasten the show’s decline, even if it should have been taken as an opportunity to move back closer to a simple sports quiz.
Rather than relentlessly chasing new, imagined audiences, perhaps this is the moment the BBC recognized that there are more sports anoraks than ever before and that a show that to test the audience’s knowledge.
After all, University Challenge continues after more than 60 years on air and Mastermind has just moved into its fifth decade.
But no. Someone convinced themselves that new entertainer-presenter Paddy McGuiness was the answer and, with the team captains having few names outside of their sports, the end result was entirely predictable.
Of course the wider stream of sports broadcasting was always against them. From Soccer AM to Goals on Sunday and Sportsweek to Football Focus, magazine-style programs have always been in question in recent years. Any sports broadcasting executive will tell you that live action dominates the schedules, with short social media clips as well as podcasts and long-form documentaries driving content decisions.
The great shame about the BBC is that it still holds an incredible archive of little-watched sports footage. A dedicated sports channel, which combines unlocking some of this history with those sports that are often lost behind the red button, could be a total winner.
The BBC hinted in its statement that A Question of Sport might return in some form but, without a revamp that really starts by prioritizing the informed sports fan over some imagined light entertainment opportunities, it’s not worth the trouble put on.
