Star Soccer

ATV Midlands Football Highlights 1968-81
The Midlands Sunday afternoon highlights version of Star Soccer began with season 1968/69, industrial action meant that the first two scheduled editions could not be shown and the 3rd was of an abandoned match due to a fire in the main stand! The commentator, 45 year old Hugh Johns, was already familiar to viewers in the Midlands having described a number of England matches (including the triumphant 1966 World Cup final) and Manchester United's 1968 European Cup final victory for the whole ITV network, Johns became best known for his catchphrase "One-nothing!" which he often called out whenever the first goal was scored.
ATV, who produced the programme, had originally provided the very first weekend commercial television service for the London area from September 1955**, a decade later they began producing a regular football highlights show for London viewers only (also called Star Soccer), the Midlands and North's weekend commercial service at that time had been provided by ABC television who produced World of Soccer which ran for three seasons - 1965/66, 1966/67 and 1967/68.
In July 1968 ATV lost their weekend capital franchise to 'London Weekend Television' but they would gain an exclusive seven days a week Midlands contract. Hugh Johns was retained by ATV - as was the Star Soccer brand - and both then became synonymous with Midlands football***. The show was still being broadcast in black and white in 1968/69 with ex-Wolverhampton Wanderers legend Billy Wright providing analysis and interviewing the key personal on the pitch after the game. From November 1969 Star Soccer was broadcast in colour and in late 1971 former Westward TV presenter Gary Newbon took over as interviewer/link man, Newbon could still be seen presenting the programme in its' final season of 1982/83 whilst Hugh Johns lasted until the end of 1981/82**** by which time ATV had been replaced by Central Television (For details of the post January 1982 period see Star Soccer - The Central Years).

*Industrial action in August 1968 blacked out the first two Midlands editions of Star Soccer.
**ATV had broadcast a Monday-Friday service to the Midlands since 1956.
***Star Soccer would sometimes be screened by other smaller regions who struggled to justify covering matches of their own (HTV and Border for example).
****After leaving Star Soccer, Hugh Johns continued to work for HTV Wales for whom he'd presented mid-week sports coverage whilst employed by ATV/Central at weekends, he continued to commentate for HTV until the 1995/96 season, he died on 27th June 2007 at the age of 84.

See here for an article on Star Soccer published in 1977.

*Sponsorship on shirts first began to take off at the very end of the 1970's, but sponsored shirts could not be worn in front of TV cameras until the 1983/84 season.

*ATV/Central coverage of the Swindon area overlapped with that of HTV WEST whose cameras were also sent to Swindon Town's ground on numerous occasions.
**As well as Northampton Town, Peterborough United could almost be regarded as a Midlands club, especially after Central began their Central News East service, although both towns were still primarily covered by Anglia.
***ATV may have been encouraged to cover the 1970 Northampton v Man Utd cup tie because Anglia would not be colour equipped until mid-way through the following season.
****A proportion of viewers around Oxford were tuned to the London service. Some viewers in the Stoke area were tuned to Granada.

Star Soccer programme format
The programme was typically an hour in length, would start sometime between 2pm-2:30pm on Sunday afternoons and would be divided into three parts; beginning with the main match* which would be, regardless of the result, the Midlands ground the ATV cameras had been sent to - So if the Midlands based match had ended in a goalless bore, it would still dominate the programme even though footage available from other regions might have yielded more excitement. Around 35 minutes of footage from the main game would be shown with an ad break at half-time, full-time would be followed by interviews with managers/players conducted on the pitch after the spectators had left the ground. The remainder of the programme would include one or two matches from other regions (preferably involving a Midlands team playing away) but these would be re-edited from the original edits to fit into a shorter time slot, the 3rd match (added during 1979/80) would be little more than just the goals. There was also a round-up of local football interest read to camera by another presenter (Trevor East did this for a while, later Tony Francis, Nick Owen or Bob Hall). Occasionally there'd be a "Dancing footballers" sequence which would be a rather crude montage of action clips of just a split second or two (players falling over, fouls, players kissing eachother in celebration etc.) all shuttled rapidly backwards and forwards in time to a pop hit of the day for 'hilarious' results**. There was no proper post match analysis until Jimmy Greaves was recruited for the start of season 1980/81 when the show was switched to a Saturday night slot for the first time, although Billy Wright had occasionally been interviewed on the pitch for his thoughts by Hugh Johns.

*Hugh Johns would usually be the first voice heard on the programme, welcoming viewers to whichever ground he was at. Studio introductions began around 1978.
**The "Dancing footballers" technique was first employed to fill time during ITV's coverage of the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico.

The Star Soccer theme tunes
Initially, the Midlands version of Star Soccer stuck with the London theme, a guitar piece. By the end of 1969/70 it was using a new theme "Fanfare in Beat" which was also used for ITV's Home International coverage at the end of that season and later on some midweek highlights programmes circa 1973, Star Soccer contined to use it until at least 1971/72 and probably a couple of more seasons beyond. Then, by 1976/77 at the latest, came the classic Star Soccer theme tune which was specially commissioned for the programme, composed by Richard Hill it was simply titled "Star Soccer". A final signature tune was introduced from the start of the 1981/82 season.

What's left in the archives?
Very few pre-1981/82 season editions of Star Soccer are thought to have survived on broadcast standard videotape, all of the 1960's & '70's archive footage seen on TV since appears to have been culled from tapes of LWT's The Big Match - which would sometimes select Midlands footage to be shown after the main London based match in re-edited form. The earliest known surviving typical episode on VT (ie. highlights of Saturday league matches) is apparently the 27/Aug/1977 edition and there are only three other complete shows from the 1970's in the BFI archive*. Happily a fair number of programmes from 1981-83 are still in the vaults and there is an indication that ITC film reels sent to TV companies abroad exist for complete seasons dating back to the 1960's until 1978**.

*The 14/Aug/1971 edition may possibly survive in complete form at the BFI, there are also a few examples of raw footage from early-mid '70' matches (just the action, not of the broadcast programme) as well as an Anglo-Scottish [Texaco] Cup edition from Aug/1974. There's also a reference to WBA v Arsenal 1970 (which may in fact be the 25/Apr/1971 edition).
**Star Soccer was sold to Australian TV - it was shown on the Channel 9 stations from 1967/68 and then Channel 7 from 1973/74 until the end of 1977/78 (LWT's The Big Match could also be seen down under on ABC from the early 1970's). From the Autumn of 1969, feeds of ATV coverage were beamed to the Swedish TV channel SVT for live broadcast on Saturday afternoons and this went on for at least a couple of seasons.

What matches were shown
The following lists detail all of the Saturday fixtures recorded by ATV cameras as the main match for Star Soccer. Re-edits of regional games included on Star Soccer are, where known, indicated by a letter (L=LWT, G=Granada, Y=Yorkshire, T=Tyne Tees, H=HTV, E=(East)Anglia, W=Westward, S=Southern/TVS and X=Scottish). For midweek games (which were networked) go here, for full details of networked Wembley Cup finals go here and for European finals see here. Given dates are for when the match was played (not the broadcast). Non-Midlands based matches are in italics."ITC export" denotes that a film recording is known to have been distributed to TV stations abroad and may still exist.

Central Television
ATVwas replaced by Central Television on 1st January 1982. The new station was more of a name change than a brand new company, although they were now obliged to be more locally orientated. ATV had been based in Birmingham but they had held onto premises in Borehamwood (a remnant of ATV's London franchise era), Central would cease producing programmes from Borehamwood and build a new studio in Nottingham from where they would provide a separate local news service for those in the East of the region. Central retained the Star Soccer brand for their football highlights programmes but the 1982/83 season saw a change in commentator when Hugh Johns was replaced by Peter Brackley*. Bob Hall could now often be seen presenting the programme but sadly this would be Star Soccer's final season.

The "TV Times" entry for the 30th October 1982 edition (10:35-11:35pm) reads.... "Gary Newbon and Jimmy Greaves head Star Soccer's team, with another fast moving Saturday night's soccer show. The Central cameras bring you coverage of a top Second Division match with commentary by Peter Brackley, while there are highlights from two other top matches - both from the First Division. Nick Owen's news spot rounds up the day's main football stories. Editor - Trevor East, Producer - Sid Kilbey, OB Director - Stuart Wilson"

*Brighton supporter Peter Brackley, having commentated for BBC Radio, went on to work for the ITV network (including World Cups) and Sky. He died aged 67 on 14th October 2018.
 
 

The end of Sunday afternoon regional highlights
ITV began showing networked LIVE league matches from October 1983 which was pretty much responsible for the death of the traditional regional Sunday afternoon highlights programmes, Central News partly compensated by sending a single camera to selected matches for Monday tea-time reports. 1984/85 was an absolute nadir for English football as crowd trouble spiralled completely out of control, this apocalyptic season's hall of shame included Midlands club Leicester City whose January FA Cup tie with Burton Albion had to be replayed after the Burton keeper was knocked out by a large missile thrown from the Leicester end, whilst on 11th May (the same day of the fatal Bradford City stand fire which claimed the lives of 56 spectators) a 15 year old Birmingham City fan was killed when a wall was pushed over by rioting Leeds fans.
With professional football now synonymous with hooliganism and unsafe grounds, attendance's collapsed to new lows. Unthinkable as it is today, football in England in 1985 was thought to be on it's last legs, there were even calls for the sport to be banned altogether. Television companies inevitably grew weary and for the first half of 1985/86 there was no televised football whatsoever, but a relatively successful and trouble free England World Cup campaign in Mexico during the summer months of 1986 had the desired effect of relaxing the furrowed brow on the face of English football and, as the game began to re-build its' reputation, occasional regional highlights specials popped up throughout the rest of the decade.

Central Sports Special
Central's weekday sports programmes were mostly focussed on football and boxing. It was first broadcast in August 1990 and normally went out late Tuesday/Wednesday nights (the title was also used for very rare Sunday afternoon highlights). The regular football commentator on the show was Alan Parry, Jimmy Greaves was usually involved (either co-commentating or offering his opinions in the studio) whilst the main presenter appeared to be Bob Hall (although Gary Newbon and Tony Francis may have also presented). Most other regions stuck with Midweek SportsSpecial networked from London and presented by Jim Rosenthal, Granada were one of the other regions who regularly opted out with Granada Soccer Night (they now had Clive Tyldesley as their regular commentator).