Scorebars / scoreboard OSGs - history, firsts and lasts

Here's an interesting one. S4C, either in an attempt to be innovative or to bypass the bilingual problem, eschewed team names entirely for their early year rugby coverage from 1997. The idea was that most Welsh rugby fans would know the team colours / strip design of each of the Welsh premiership clubs, so you had a colourful scoreboard as seen in this video (from 1:34)


One scoreboard that didn't go off screen when a goal was scored was the ITV Champions League bug of 1995-97ish. Very stylish.

Acorn machines also have the advantage that, with the OS in ROM, they don't take long to start up - helpful in the event of a crash. Omnibus TX automation systems ran on them too.

Acorn machines - BBC Micros and the Archimedes/Risc PC range were widely used for on-screen graphics in the 80s and 90s.

Gardeners World used to use a BBC Micro for their captions. (They recorded multiple as-live sequences, in-sequence, and took a finished programme master away with them from the OB)

Mastermind used to use an Archimedes for their score graphics. (They were monochrome so used one of the RGB channels for the key and one for the fill - rather than self-keying)

As many have pointed out WWTBAM used to use Acorn machines, and the company behind the graphics spent a lot of time and money developing their own ARM-based TV graphics solution, but for some reason it didn't ever hit the market. (I think that one of the chips it was based around EOLed or was prototyped but didn't move to manufacture?)

Acorn RISC PCs were widely used for Omnibus/Columbus products, and also used for a number of BBC in-house control applications (such as remote tally, iris/black/paint control of radio cameras which didn't have a triax/fibre connection that would normally be needed for these)

Both the BBC Micro and the Archimedes/Risc PC had genlock facilities (which were vital for broadcast graphics use) and were robust enough to survive an OB life.

The BBC Micro was also capable of contributing to the occasional pres cockup



Weren't they also used for VT clocks in some places?

Lots of BBC English regions used BBC Micros (and in some cases Amigas) to generate VT Clocks.

Off topic but that Red Dwarf promo script was appalling. Red Dwarf was not on an intergalactic mission, nor did it "blast" anywhere. Lazy.

Sounds like the people who made the trailer were expecting a British Star Trek, not what the show really was. Also, the TWO logo seriously mismatches it.

Or that's just the impression they were trying to give to audiences to get them to watch it. Would be far from the first time a trailer's deliberately given a false impression.

More than familiar with that trailer too, as it's on the Red Dwarf Series 1 DVD!

Surely the joke is that the voiceover is implying it's something like Star Trek and then it cuts to the clips showing it's anything but that?

Too subtle for me.

I'd forgotten how good that one looked. It was probably quite ahead of its time too.

Has there ever been a "Champions League scorebar" that was used in many countries, or has each channel always done its own thing?

And, while pondering going fully down the Euro-Grafik rabbit-hole, I can confirm that in mid-1997 ARD Das Erste was using a wee scoreboard, while Sat1 still wasn't bothering with any, O mein Gott. More on this story as it breaks




A curiosity from 94/95 – a big ITV Champions League game that didn't have a scoreboard.

Man Utd v Barcelona, 19.10.1994


Perhaps they just forgot to switch it on, but ITV's graphics were still in flux. The ITV Sport logo had been on the left for Man Utd's earlier game against "Goteborg", then they put it on the right again, for the match that night in Barcelona.

Barcelona v Man Utd, 02.11.1994


Another game available with no scorebar, but only if you pressed the red button, was BBC's Slovakia v England in 2002.
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=39178

(BBC One had the scorebar, the black and red one-line squeeze look.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwzCwcM1Y8M

At that time, the BBC also had a commentary-free audio feed on the red button. I sympathize a bit with the OP in that thread – after a few minutes without a scoreboard, I don't miss it. It's mostly useful if you tune in late, or in sports with lots of points. Nowadays scorebars are so small they're rarely intrusive, but nonetheless, with the mania for HD and picture clarity, it's a little surprising no other channel has offered a "clear screen" option on red button or something.

Seeing some of those early-2000s score graphics, with team names stacked on top of each other, plus a channel logo (usually a large "5"), and all looking bigger in 4:3, I can see why some would want rid.

Don't think so - in the UK we've never had one, at least. Sky's used to be in the Champions League font, as is BT's, but ITV always did their own thing. That font in the mid-nineties was also used on ITV for all their other football at the time, which probably they wouldn't be allowed to do now.



The red button offerings on the Beeb from 2001-04 were really interesting, actually, because they also had what was billed as a "tactical commentary" - an alternative commentary with various graphics, replays and alternate camera angles, plus the ability for viewers to email in. In fact, what this usually entailed was Ian Dennis and Steve Claridge, off-tube, chatting away (I remember one match where George Burley had done the previous game and Claridge repeatedly tried to get Dennis to suggest he was better than him) and slagging off all the people who emailed in. I didn't watch it all the time but it made for entertaining viewing, and they would often be far more candid and outspoken than the usual commentators - I remember watching England vs Slovakia via it in 2003, when England were awful, and then scored twice in the last five minutes and Claridge went "oh no!" when the second went in and said everyone would forget how bad they'd been for the rest of the match.

They offered it on more or less all their live England and FA Cup games in 2001-04, the period when that was all they had, up to and including Euro 2004, but stopped when they got the Premier League back and had far more football so couldn't lavish so much on one game. But it was good fun.