Nine's Wide World of Sport

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Nine's Wide World of Sports
Image:Wide World of Sports.svg </small>
Genre	Sport
Running time	varies
Starring	Paul Vautin, Matthew Johns, Peter Sterling (NRL) Ritchie Benaud, Mark Nicholas, Tony Greig (Cricket)
Country of origin	Australia
Original channel	Nine Network
Original run	1982 - 1997 (program), 1998–incumbent (brand)

Nine's Wide World of Sport or Nine's Wide World of Sports is the brand that all sporting events broadcast on the Nine Network are broadcast under. The flagship sports of the brand are Rugby League (NRL, Cricket (Australian Summer of Cricket) and formerly Australian Rules Football (AFL) until Nine lost the rights in 2006.

1 History
- 1.1 2007-2011 AFL failed broadcast rights bid
- 1.2 Summer schedule
2 Events
3 Anchors
- 3.1 Commentators
4 External links

[edit] History

Wide World of Sports was an Australian television show that appeared on the Nine Network. The show enjoyed a long run on television. In the 1980s it was hosted by Mike Gibson and Ian Chappell, before being hosted in the 1990s by Max Walker and Ken Sutcliffe. The show ended in 1997, after the network axed some of its under-performing shows.

In 2000 Nine acquired broadcast rights for Friday night and Sunday games in the Australian Football League, the elite Australian Rules Football competition, sharing it with the Seven Network in 2000 & 2001 . The deal assigned the rights for finals broadcasting to Network Ten, a deal which reportedly flabbergasted Packer.

[edit] 2007-2011 AFL failed broadcast rights bid

In January 2006, the Seven Network & Network Ten exercised their "first and last" rights agreement with the AFL to trump the Nine Network's $780 Million bid for broadcasting rights from season 2007-11.

If Seven & Ten were unable to match the AFL's "quality of coverage" demands by May 5 of 2006 (better coverage into regional areas, northern states and on pay television, as promised in the Nine bid) the AFL would have been allowed to award the broadcasting rights back to Nine. The Seven/Ten consortium, however, obtained the rights, with Nine broadcasting its last AFL match on a Sunday hosted by Tony Jones with a guest appearance from Nine's chief executive and former AFL commentator Eddie McGuire.

[edit] Summer schedule

Nine bases their summer schedule around broadcasts of cricket, for which it has owned the local broadcast rights since World Series Cricket in the late 1970s. Its cricket broadcasts in that era revolutionised the way the sport was covered, featuring camera placed at both ends of the field (after Packer famously complained about seeing "cricketer's bums" every second over), instant replays, and other innovations.