ABSTRACT
In 1974 Ed Buscombe, publications editor at the British Film Institute, persuaded a group of us to research and analyze British television coverage of that year’s World Cup finals. It seemed an appropriate moment. The 1970 World Cup had witnessed considerable expansion in British television coverage (not least because England had won the competition in 1966), and ITV, then the sole British commercial channel, had introduced a much publicized panel of expert football worthies whose function was to frame and interpret both individual games and the competition as a whole. Even more coverage was promised in 1974 in spite of the fact that England (though not Scotland) had failed to qualify for the 1974 finals, and the experimental format of four years earlier had now emerged as a fully-fledged program template.
