BBC axes Ski Sunday after nearly 50 years amid criticism of sports coverage decline

A staple of Sunday afternoon TV for almost 50 years, with an instantly recognisable theme tune, is being axed amid complaints that the BBC’s sports coverage continues to go downhill.

The BBC head of sport, Alex Kay-Jelski, has been under fire of late and will certainly not have endeared himself to some of the licence-paying public who have enjoyed the coverage of winter sports on one of Britain’s longest-running sports shows with the news on Tuesday that Ski Sunday is being dropped.

The unruffable David Vine was the first presenter of the weekly show that created household names in the UK out of alpine skiers such as Franz Klammer, Konrad Bartelski and Michela Figini – while there will be no more mentions of glamorous Val-d’Isère and Val Gardena to help brighten the mood under leaden skies on a Sunday winter teatime.

Ski Sunday became equally famous for its theme tune, a rousing violin-led arrangement called Pop Looks Bach, which was composed by Sam Fonteyn and was often towards the top of polls and lists of signature TV sports melodies. It was recorded for the Boosey & Hawkes Music Library in 1970.

“If music is licensed from a music library, you never know when it might appear,” recalled the composer’s son, Nicholas, when the programme was rebooted in 2008 but with the popular theme retained. “So he’d often be sitting there watching and suddenly say, ‘That’s mine!’ He was always delighted when it was on TV and watched avidly, even when it was on that Barbara Woodhouse programme [1980’s Training Dogs the Woodhouse Way, for which he also wrote the theme].

“Since its debut in 1978, Ski Sunday has become an iconic part of the winter sports calendar, bringing the excitement, drama and beauty of the action on the snow to audiences across the UK. Changing audience behaviours and the tough financial decisions needed to meet savings requirements mean BBC Sport must continually review how it delivers value for licence-fee payers and serves audiences across all platforms. This decision forms part of that process,” was the explanation given in a BBC press release.

The corporation’s critics will be quick to condemn the move by Kay-Jelski who shocked many earlier this year by arguing that the BBC does not need live rights to a sport to be relevant.

Speaking at the Financial Times business of football conference, the director of sport said: “My challenge to us at the BBC all the time is let’s just make sure we are in the conversation of the things that matter. For example, we have audio rights to Formula One but not video rights. But we still have reporting and live pages and digital video that draw in millions and millions and millions of people. You can still be relevant, you can still matter if you don’t show the sport.”

Kay-Jelski has been criticised recently for his decision not to have his expert panel leave their Salford base for New York until the semi-finals of the World Cup and for scrapping Saturday lunchtime preview programme Football Focus. Last month there were media reports of unrest among the Match of the Day production team on the eve of the Premier League season.

In recent years, Ski Sunday had become a magazine-style programme with a wider winter sports remit. Its final presenters were Ed Leigh and British former downhill racer Chemmy Alcott.