Ski Sunday is the BBC Sports weekly magazine-style television show covering winter sports, broadcast in the United Kingdom on Sundays in an early evening time-slot.

Contents 1 History 2 Format 3 Theme tune 4 References 5 External links 5.1 Video clips 5.2 Audio clips

[edit] History

Originally launched in the late 1970s on the back of the 1976 Winter Olympics, later forming part of Sunday Grandstand and presented and commentated on by British broadcasting luminaries such as Ron Pickering and David Vine (who presented the show for 20 years until he took semi-retirement in 1996), the show focused primarily on the blue riband events of downhill skiing and Special Slalom. Following the final edition of Grandstand in early 2007, Ski Sunday became one of the longest-running BBC Sports television programmes still being broadcast; the 2008 season was the 30th.^[1]

[edit] Format

As the British appetite for alpine skiing changed over time, the programme has experimented with different formats and time-slots. In recent years the show has been presented by, amongst others, Hazel Irvine, Matt Chilton, former British Olympic skier Graham Bell and Ed Leigh. The 2008 season started 20 January in an extended prime time slot (Sundays 7pm to 8pm GMT) and was broadcast weekly on BBC2 for eight weeks. The 2008 revised format covered most forms of competition skiing and snowboarding as well as covering travelogue and entertainment features.^[1] The series also offered interactive features via the BBC Red Button service.

The 2009 series began on 10 January with a special preview programme presented by Graham Bell covering a summer trek in the Alps. The series-proper starts on 18 January, and will again be broadcast on BBC2 and BBC Red Button.^[2] Prior to the launch of the new season, it was reported that the more general winter sports content of the 2008 format was not popular with viewers,^[3] and the BBC acknowledged: "we didn't get things quite right last year. Ski racing fans wanted more of the action and our new viewers wanted more adventure."^[4] Consequently for 2009 the show will be divided into two programmes: Ski Sunday and High Altitude; the former will cover ski racing and the latter, "mountain adventure".

[edit] Theme tune

The iconic theme music to the programme, Pop Looks Bach by Sam Fonteyn (born Samuel Soden), has changed very little over the years and is well-known to the British public. It has been re-mixed and sampled many times over. The music has also become the theme tune for the BBC's coverage of the Winter Olympics. In the US, the religion-oriented radio show The World Tomorrow used the Ski Sunday theme as its opening music during the 1980s. It was first recorded for the Boosey & Hawkes Music Library in 1970, and was not written for the BBC. It has similarities to the opening of Bach's famous Fugue in D minor, which is referenced to by a hardly noticably church organ in the background instrumentation of the original recording.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Winter Sports at BBC Online

[edit] Video clips

• 2008 intro

[edit] Audio clips

• Pop Looks Bach by the New Dance Orchestra
• Theme Tune performed by the Yorkshire Imperial Brass Band