In August 1964, as violence raged in Vietnam, Rhodesia and Cyprus, "mods" and "rockers" rioted at British seaside resorts and James Bond creator Ian Fleming died, BBC2 introduced a football highlights programme. Titled Match Of The Day, its first broadcast featured the same FA Cup final pairing of Liverpool and Arsenal as last weekend, but attracted just 20,000 viewers. Tonight, the final episode of television's most enduring football show marks the end of an era, not merely in jockstrap theatre but in broadcasting in general.
Like the FA Cup final, the Eurovision Song Contest used to be an annual highlight of the broadcasting calendar. The year after Match Of The Day began, the late Butch Moore became Ireland's first Eurovision entrant. Butch finished sixth (Luxembourg won with France Gall singing Poupee de Cire, Poupee de Son - like you really need that information!) and national pride was satisfied. Yet Eurovision's journey from public interest through naffness and on to absurdity points to the possible future of televised football - because there's quite simply too much of it. Since the proliferation of live games on Sky Sports and the transformation of football from sport to showbiz, MOTD has not been quite the force it was in its heyday. Yet its passing after 37 years is a further proof that the most lucrative levels of the "people's game" have been annexed by the private sector. Football fans of a certain age may remember Saturday nights in the single TV-set households of the 1960s and 1970s, when parental resolve to see Gay Byrne's Late Late Show invariably prevailed.
It cut no ice that the intricate lines of Jimmy Hill's beard posed hugely educational, indeed groundbreaking, problems in geometry and trigonometry - absolutely essential viewing for Inter and Leaving Cert students. Gaybo simply evaded red cards like Bobby Charlton. The only real hope was an uninteresting Late Late guest - the duller the better - which might permit switching channels. As a result of their generally dependable dullness, it wasn't difficult to develop soft spots for film stars, politicians and most crusading cranks.
Praise the bore who made possible the witnessing of Ernie Hunt's goal for Coventry against Everton in October 1970. Its likes will never be seen again because the rules now deem illegal the manoeuvre which created it. Willie Carr teed-up the shot with a donkey-kick - jumping with the ball between his heels and releasing it in mid-air - and Hunt volleyed it over the wall and into the net. It became the "goal of the season" in 1970-71 and has rarely, if ever, been bettered since. The Eurovision Song Contest peaked during the same era - Abba's 1974 win with Waterloo in Brighton is generally considered its high point when public interest, naffness and talent combined uniquely. Singing about love, by using Napoleon Bonaparte's doomed battle as a metaphor, they combined European history and Eurovision air-headedness in a form of euro-gibberish PR fairytale, audacious in its blandness. Then again, semantic emptiness, which could be interpreted by anyone with a smattering of English, has long been the favoured tactical ploy to win the contest.
But it is cultural emptiness which decrees that the financially unwelcome Eurovision should continue on public service channels while financially lucrative football highlights are simply bought by commercial television despite public desire for ad-free BBC to retain them. Britain's ITV has paid £183 million to screen Premiership highlights for the next three years. That should attract the advertisers and their hired, smarmy voices flogging insurance, cars and cosmetics. Ironically, it was the absence of ads which contributed to making Match Of The Day a pleasure to watch.
Consider this: as recently as 1981, when Everton goalkeeper Jim McDonagh mistakenly wore a jersey with the club's sponsors, Hafnia, emblazoned across it for the second half of a match against Crystal Palace, MOTD viewers were shown him from a side-angle only. With the ban on shirt advertising on television long since lifted, it is startling to realise just how commercialised televised football has become. Even kids, never mind millionaire players, have been transformed into human billboards.
It's difficult not to fear that TV will eventually suck football dry. Certainly, television money has transformed the sport and technology has vastly improved coverage since the prime years of Match Of The Day. But the cost of abundance is a loss of wonder, even of gratitude, so that seeing a defining match nowadays has lost its rarity value and become devalued. It's going to take inexhaustible marketing - deranged hype, actually - for youngsters growing up with corporate logos staining their clothes to remain convinced that football isn't just about money.
THEN again, perhaps it is primarily about money now. Televised games used to provide meaningful communal occasions. The FA Cup final, for instance, though always embarrassingly hyped and anachronistic in its symbols of English nationalism (a repetitive stress on "tradition"; Wembley, the "Empire" stadium; too much camera time spent spotting bored royals who would rather be at Badminton) is now quaint and anachronistic. There's no real money in it and that's why Liverpool's game today at unfashionable Charlton (a win guarantees Champions League participation and at least £20 million) is much more important to the club.
It's true that European football contests are not castrated, fifth-rate events like the Eurovision Song Contest. But the Champions League, with its group and knockout phases, lacks the romance of the old, death-or-glory European Cup. Now it's about structuring the competition to maximise revenue - and even if Ireland's commercial channel, TV3, hadn't provided such abysmal coverage of this season's marathon, ratings would have dropped anyway.
But on TV3, even in the 15 minutes before kick-off, two ad breaks are inserted. Sure, they have to pay their way and the media needs advertising but this is a drift towards the wasteland of US television. With ITV's Premiership highlights programme replacing MOTD next season, prepare for yet another ad-fest. Sky Sports is battling to keep the ITV programme off-air until 7 p.m., but ITV is still aiming for a 6 p.m. slot with a late night repeat. Six o'clock for Match Of The Day? It's just uncivilised.
Anyway, it's telling to see how such TV staples of a generation ago - the Eurovision, the FA Cup final, even Match Of The Day - fare in an age of "free" trade and mega-marketing. Ostensibly, the changes introduced are to increase "consumer choice" but all surveys show that consumers would choose less, not more advertising. Not that such a real kind of consumer choice counts a whit. Consumer choice, you see, isn't really about what consumers want.
Instead, it's about providing the providers of consumption the choice of bidding for broadcast rights. Football, no more than other TV staples, cannot afford to resist the loot which comes from being offered for auction. Meanwhile, the cultural landscape becomes colonised by commercial "imperatives". Indeed, at a very basic level, the fate of football can be seen as a kind of attitudinal training for us all - forget any possible alternatives and accept that the nice advertisers and selfless pay-per-view people are doing their best for you. Colonise culture and you colonise minds. Where better to do this than with the most popular game in the world?
THE real danger of selling everything to the highest bidder is that, ultimately, culture - sport, the arts, even thinking - becomes enclosed. Culture becomes a part of commerce rather than the other way around. Inevitably, a predatory elite emerges and the gap between rich and poor grows alarmingly. That, quite clearly, is the price that football is paying for its television profits.
Is it really to viewers' advantage that TV3 has snapped up popular soaps and the Champions League? Or that ITV has bought MOTD? Essentially, such moves are business ventures - legitimate in themselves - but not, as they are sold to the public, primarily in the interests of viewers. Though Willie Carr's version of the donkey kick is now illegal, because it keeps the ball, albeit briefly, out of play, the choice of how we view the game - with ads or without - is totally kept out of play from fans. Very democratic, eh?
So, enjoy BBC's final Match Of The Day tonight. In three years' time, it could be back on the Beeb, but only if ITV hasn't made its projected profits.
The programme's distinctive theme tune will remain the soundtrack not only of a British national institution but of a distinct era in football and television. But its day is done and the market, owning the football, is now the only game in town. Any idea that professional football is still a people's game reminds us that if you think it's all over. . . with the demise of Match Of The Day, it is now!