Yes David Coleman hosted the World Cup Grandstand that afternoon. World of Sport was presented by Eamonn Andrews back then but the TV Times is light on commentator information for the final. Other ITV commentators during the tournament, apart from Hugh Johns were John Camkin, Barry Davies, Gerry Loftus and Dave Bowen
Always found it peculiar as to why Hugh John's got the 1966 World Cup Final for ITV, when Gerry Loftus was their FA Cup final commentator, up to and including the 1966 Everton v Sheffield Wednesday final.
I take it David Coleman presented for BBC and Eamonn Andrews for ITV? Ken Wolstenholme's usual co commentator was Wally Barnes and he was alongside him for the final, did Hugh Johns have anyone with him?
I'd heard on an archive recording that Wynford Vaughan Thomas was the host for ITV for the final and an anecdote went that Kenneth Wolstenholme could be heard grumbling in the gantry that with WYT, Hugh Johns and Dave Bowen, the Welsh were taking over.
I had the great honour of meeting Hugh Johns in the 1990's when he covered Crown Green Bowling for Granada TV, he never came across embittered over KW's famous line, he seemed pleased just to be remembered for playing some part in a still unique event and of course Hugh like KW did commentate on four World Cup Finals.
However what I do know is that on World Cup Final day the Third Programme (BBC Radio) that evening broadcast a concert celebrating the Vienniese Waltz Kings and the big show on the Light Programme was
Blackpool Night with top of the bill, the vigourous north country comedian Albert Modley
Amazing what you remember from listening to Radio 2 panel games 25 years ago
I know World of Sport had wrestling scheduled to start ten minutes after the final whistle.
Good site, the answers were there all the time! And yes World of Sport had wrestling scheduled both before and after the final from Brent Town Hall: Mike Marino v Yuri Borienko, Johnny Yearsley v Roy St Clair and Adrian Street v Terry Jowett.
Senior BBC engineering staff have said since that one of their biggest disappointments was that colour wasn't brought forward to be in place for the final stages of the tournament. It could have happened apparently; had there been the will at higher level it's feasible that the final could have been captured in colour even if not broadcast.
I'd always thought that BBC & ITV used separate cameras for the final, like they always did for FA Cup Finals when I watched them in the 70s & into the 80s. I may have got this impression from seeing poor quality 405 ITV recordings to compare with the BBC's 625. I have the BBC 2 hour 625 lines recording of the final on videotape somehwere, from a BBC programme broadcast just before Euro 96, and which I believe was first (re-)broadcast in July 1976 as part of the BBC's celebrations of 40 years of regular broadcast tv, which coincided with the tenth anniversary of the match
A reason for what to a modern viewpoint is a very underwhelming attitude to the final is that The World Cup was quite a recent addition to world sports having only started up again post-war for the 1954 tournament, and England via The FA had not been entirely keen on the competition until 62. When England did win in 66 it was seen as about time and quite reasonably the first of many to come. Ask anyone involved in football back then if 1966 would represent the national team's only trophy until at leat 2014 and you'd have been mocked harshly. It's impossible to say but had England won in Mexico in 1970 (instead of losing the quarter final from a winning position having been kept awake the previous night and with the first choice keeper being out with food poisoning, widely thought of as being a result of sabotaged food), England could have won, would probably have qualified for both the 74 and 78 finals and the last 40+ years might have been totally different. Or we might have still suffered from not investing and moving with the times and continuing to believe that only we knew how the game should be played and all these foreign johnies were hopelessly wrong.
As an addendum to a comment about FA Cup Finals being on BBC1 in monochrome and BBC2 in colour, I thought the 69 final between Leicester City and Manchester City had been the first to be broadcast in colour on 2 and b/w on 1. Willing to be corrected obviously.
This may sound like a silly question...but why wouldn't they have shown the game aswelll?
According to the link posted by Steve Williams they didn't show any of the games - maybe it's a mistake,couldn't have been a contractual problem as they were part of the ITV network.
Re BBC colour: BBC did not have any colour OB units until the summer of 1967 when Wimbledon was televised in colour for the first time on BBC2. Doubt the units were even built at the time of the World Cup Final although, as mentioned, ATV had a colour OB unit based at Elstree.
As an addendum to a comment about FA Cup Finals being on BBC1 in monochrome and BBC2 in colour, I thought the 69 final between Leicester City and Manchester City had been the first to be broadcast in colour on 2 and b/w on 1. Willing to be corrected obviously.
This may sound like a silly question...but why wouldn't they have shown the game aswelll?
I think Channel's maximum potential audience was 140,000, If we assume they would only have got 10% of audience (as that was overall figure split) they would have had 14,000 viewers. Probably cost too much to be worthwhile.They always had to run on a tight budget, and maybe each ITV company had to contribute to the expense of mounting the coverage (for the whole tornament) If they thought they would be out of pocket they wouldn't have taken it.
The ITV Live Network Agreement of the time meant that Channel would have paid an amount related to its advertising income and not anything related to the cost of programme material.
I think Channel's maximum potential audience was 140,000, If we assume they would only have got 10% of audience (as that was overall figure split) they would have had 14,000 viewers. Probably cost too much to be worthwhile.They always had to run on a tight budget, and maybe each ITV company had to contribute to the expense of mounting the coverage (for the whole tornament) If they thought they would be out of pocket they wouldn't have taken it.
That's possible.
TV-am refused to pay a share of the cost of the Los Angeles Olympics, on the quite sensible grounds that none of the events was taking place between 6am and 9.25am, so it wouldn't benefit from the audience.
The rest of the network retaliated by refusing to allow TV-am any access to its feeds, reporters or other resources, and even made them leave the room at Heads of Sport meetings when the Olympics was being discussed.
TV-am wasn't really bothered by this. It was a member of the EBU in its own right (as most of the ITV regions still are today), so got all the pictures it needed without paying a penny.
TV-am refused to pay a share of the cost of the Los Angeles Olympics, on the quite sensible grounds that none of the events was taking place between 6am and 9.25am, so it wouldn't benefit from the audience.
The rest of the network retaliated by refusing to allow TV-am any access to its feeds, reporters or other resources, and even made them leave the room at Heads of Sport meetings when the Olympics was being discussed.
TV-am wasn't really bothered by this. It was a member of the EBU in its own right (as most of the ITV regions still are today), so got all the pictures it needed without paying a penny.
But ITV pulled out completely from covering the LA Olympics, the last straw was a dispute about the number
of production assistants that were proposed to be on site.
The only 'coverage' was as news on ITN's bullitens
TV-am wasn't really bothered by this. It was a member of the EBU in its own right (as most of the ITV regions still are today), so got all the pictures it needed without paying a penny.
I don't think that's correct because the editor Clive Jones actually resigned because of that, as TVam were certainly intending to cover it, they even said they were going to get the likes of Telly Savalas and Michael Caine in to commentate for them. And while it wasn't taking place during TVam time, because most of the action was overnight, breakfast was going to be when most people would see the action, so it would have played a major role.
Senior BBC engineering staff have said since that one of their biggest disappointments was that colour wasn't brought forward to be in place for the final stages of the tournament. It could have happened apparently; had there been the will at higher level it's feasible that the final could have been captured in colour even if not broadcast.
I'd always thought that BBC & ITV used separate cameras for the final, like they always did for FA Cup Finals when I watched them in the 70s & into the 80s. I may have got this impression from seeing poor quality 405 ITV recordings to compare with the BBC's 625. I have the BBC 2 hour 625 lines recording of the final on videotape somehwere, from a BBC programme broadcast just before Euro 96, and which I believe was first (re-)broadcast in July 1976 as part of the BBC's celebrations of 40 years of regular broadcast tv, which coincided with the tenth anniversary of the match
A reason for what to a modern viewpoint is a very underwhelming attitude to the final is that The World Cup was quite a recent addition to world sports having only started up again post-war for the 1954 tournament, and England via The FA had not been entirely keen on the competition until 62. When England did win in 66 it was seen as about time and quite reasonably the first of many to come. Ask anyone involved in football back then if 1966 would represent the national team's only trophy until at leat 2014 and you'd have been mocked harshly. It's impossible to say but had England won in Mexico in 1970 (instead of losing the quarter final from a winning position having been kept awake the previous night and with the first choice keeper being out with food poisoning, widely thought of as being a result of sabotaged food), England could have won, would probably have qualified for both the 74 and 78 finals and the last 40+ years might have been totally different. Or we might have still suffered from not investing and moving with the times and continuing to believe that only we knew how the game should be played and all these foreign johnies were hopelessly wrong.
As an addendum to a comment about FA Cup Finals being on BBC1 in monochrome and BBC2 in colour, I thought the 69 final between Leicester City and Manchester City had been the first to be broadcast in colour on 2 and b/w on 1. Willing to be corrected obviously.
The first World Cup after the war was the 1950 tournament in Brazil where England suffered the most humiliating result in their history 0-1 v USA, who were nowhere near as strong as they are now, that and England's failure to prove themselves in subsequent competions was probably the reason for some people's indifference to it, when they finally won it in '66 it suddenly it became a big deal.
England and the other home nations had arrogantly refused to play in the three World Cups before the war, believing that they didn't have to play in them to prove that they were the best.
The first World Cup after the war was the 1950 tournament in Brazil where England suffered the most humiliating result in their history 0-1 v USA, who were nowhere near as strong as they are now, that and England's failure to prove themselves in subsequent competions was probably the reason for some people's indifference to it, when they finally won it in '66 it suddenly it became a big deal. England and the other home nations had arrogantly refused to play in the three World Cups before the war, believing that they didn't have to play in them to prove that they were the best.
In 1950 Scotland qualified as runners up in the Home Nations tournament, but refused to take part because they didn't win the Home Nations! In 1954 , in Switzerland they did attend but only took 14 players with them leaving 8 reserves at home who could travel in case of injuries to the team .
Also it seems that ITVs coverage only survives as a telerecording (recorded onto film)- its showed up on 'ITV Sports Classics' a good few years ago. The BBC had / have a 625 line videotape version which is far higher quality- albeit slightly edited version (apparently for a repeat on the 10th anniversary) with about 15 minutes missing from the two hours of the game.
As has been pointed out the colour footage is from 'Goal' the official film of the tournament. And its in 2.35:1 so is usually shown cropped on TV. Although not sure its been on in a while? Has very 'straight' and detached newsreel style narration. Worth seeing though if you get the chance.
So not even the 1966 World Cup Final fully survived TV's obsession at the time with wiping as much as possible of its own past?!
I remember ITV showing their World Cup Final coverage on the 20th anniversary in 1986. Bobby Moore was in studio, possibly with Ian St John (not too sure on that one, but he was ITV's live presenter at the time).
ITV never used to capitalise much on that 1966 footage for future tournaments after that, until Des Lynam joined - either it was a co-incidence, or he told them as they had a decent archive, why not use it?
I'd heard on an archive recording that Wynford Vaughan Thomas was the host for ITV for the final and an anecdote went that Kenneth Wolstenholme could be heard grumbling in the gantry that with WYT, Hugh Johns and Dave Bowen, the Welsh were taking over.
I had the great honour of meeting Hugh Johns in the 1990's when he covered Crown Green Bowling for Granada TV, he never came across embittered over KW's famous line, he seemed pleased just to be remembered for playing some part in a still unique event and of course Hugh like KW did commentate on four World Cup Finals.
However what I do know is that on World Cup Final day the Third Programme (BBC Radio) that evening broadcast a concert celebrating the Vienniese Waltz Kings and the big show on the Light Programme was
Blackpool Night with top of the bill, the vigourous north country comedian Albert Modley
Amazing what you remember from listening to Radio 2 panel games 25 years ago
Sorry to be picky, but are you sure it wasn't Sky Sports rather than Granada he was working for by that time? I wasn't aware that Granada were still covering crown green bowls as late as the 1990s, but I believe Hugh worked for Sky's coverage when they took over.
Hugh and Ken were great friends anyway (both were active Freemasons, albeit in different parts of the country), and there was no bitterness between them whatsoever.
Hugh never really stopped working - even in retirement he was a PR man for the South Wales Freemasons. He was never too keen on modern football, though, and only watched it on TV occasionally.
I know its off topic but to put some flesh on the bones,
Granada TV covered Crown Green Bowls inparticular until 1995 with the Bass Masters tournament. I went to Ellesmere Port when it held its final event in 1993 and then it was transferred to the Talbot Hotel in Blackpool, a famous Crown Green venue and I was there when Winsford's Glynn Cookson finally won a tv tournament beating Oldham's Andy Buckley in the final.
I spent a bit of time along with Hugh and his co commentator Bryan Brett (a lovely bloke by the way) who covered the sport for the Manchester Evening News.
Granada began covering Crown Green in 1982 with the great Keith Macklin on commentary.
Hugh and Bryan had worked together since I think 1984 on the Bass Masters, the County Classic which was from the Carr Mill Green in St Helens and the one off Crown Challenge, broadcast on the ITV network in 1988 from Blackpool's Marton Institute Green which pitched 16 flat green bowlers into a crown tournament
For Indoor Bowls Hugh and Bryan covered all four of the Superbowl events from Stage One at Granada in Manchester which brought crown players inside for their first time in a major event.
One of the co commentators for the first Superbowl in 1984 was John Freeman, famed for his Face To Face interview series in the 1960's who went on to lead London Weekend TV
Hugh also did bowls coverage for HTV Wales, that included the infamous event at a pairs tournament in Rhyl when two bowlers allegedly threw their match. It may still be available on the net.
BSkyB did cover the Waterloo Handicap a couple of times and as much as I admired Hugh, the Waterloo commentary was synonimous for me with the BBC's Harry Rigby.
To finish on a football note I was intrigued to know how Hugh gleaned his information on teams and players ahead of a major tournament in those days. He intimated that having contacts in the embassies in London always helped in getting statistics from the respective FA's and we shared memories of ITV football shows such as Kick Off from Granada, ATV's Star Soccer and Sports Arena on HTV
I know its off topic but to put some flesh on the bones,
Granada TV covered Crown Green Bowls inparticular until 1995 with the Bass Masters tournament. I went to Ellesmere Port when it held its final event in 1993 and then it was transferred to the Talbot Hotel in Blackpool, a famous Crown Green venue and I was there when Winsford's Glynn Cookson finally won a tv tournament beating Oldham's Andy Buckley in the final.
I spent a bit of time along with Hugh and his co commentator Bryan Brett (a lovely bloke by the way) who covered the sport for the Manchester Evening News.
Granada began covering Crown Green in 1982 with the great Keith Macklin on commentary.
Hugh and Bryan had worked together since I think 1984 on the Bass Masters, the County Classic which was from the Carr Mill Green in St Helens and the one off Crown Challenge, broadcast on the ITV network in 1988 from Blackpool's Marton Institute Green which pitched 16 flat green bowlers into a crown tournament
For Indoor Bowls Hugh and Bryan covered all four of the Superbowl events from Stage One at Granada in Manchester which brought crown players inside for their first time in a major event.
One of the co commentators for the first Superbowl in 1984 was John Freeman, famed for his Face To Face interview series in the 1960's who went on to lead London Weekend TV
Hugh also did bowls coverage for HTV Wales, that included the infamous event at a pairs tournament in Rhyl when two bowlers allegedly threw their match. It may still be available on the net.
BSkyB did cover the Waterloo Handicap a couple of times and as much as I admired Hugh, the Waterloo commentary was synonimous for me with the BBC's Harry Rigby.
To finish on a football note I was intrigued to know how Hugh gleaned his information on teams and players ahead of a major tournament in those days. He intimated that having contacts in the embassies in London always helped in getting statistics from the respective FA's and we shared memories of ITV football shows such as Kick Off from Granada, ATV's Star Soccer and Sports Arena on HTV
Granada did indeed cover the Waterloo Cup during the 2000s, but although it used Sky Sports graphics, it was made by an independent production company. It was presented by Elton Welsby, with commentary from John Gwynne (alongside someone else, I can't remember who). Gwynne recently announced he will be leaving Sky's darts commentary team after this summer's World Matchplay Championship.
I'm fairly sure I've read obituaries of Hugh Johns where it stated he worked on Sky's bowls coverage during the 1990s, so that would fit in with the info you've provided.
I also heard Hugh commentating on HTV Wales's local boxing coverage as late as the late 1990s, after he had retired from 'Soccer Sunday'.
In 1950 Scotland qualified as runners up in the Home Nations tournament, but refused to take part because they didn't win the Home Nations! In 1954 , in Switzerland they did attend but only took 14 players with them leaving 8 reserves at home who could travel in case of injuries to the team .
The 1954 World Cup was televised by the BBC as part of the then-new Eurovision network which involved eight countries.The Winter Olympic Games at Cortina were also televised in 1956.
Comments
Always found it peculiar as to why Hugh John's got the 1966 World Cup Final for ITV, when Gerry Loftus was their FA Cup final commentator, up to and including the 1966 Everton v Sheffield Wednesday final.
Yes, the Wales manager Dave Bowen. I seem to be posting links to this site in every thread, but here's everything you need to know...
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/ITV/WorldCup66.html
I know World of Sport had wrestling scheduled to start ten minutes after the final whistle.
This may sound like a silly question...but why wouldn't they have shown the game aswelll?
I had the great honour of meeting Hugh Johns in the 1990's when he covered Crown Green Bowling for Granada TV, he never came across embittered over KW's famous line, he seemed pleased just to be remembered for playing some part in a still unique event and of course Hugh like KW did commentate on four World Cup Finals.
However what I do know is that on World Cup Final day the Third Programme (BBC Radio) that evening broadcast a concert celebrating the Vienniese Waltz Kings and the big show on the Light Programme was
Blackpool Night with top of the bill, the vigourous north country comedian Albert Modley
Amazing what you remember from listening to Radio 2 panel games 25 years ago
Good site, the answers were there all the time! And yes World of Sport had wrestling scheduled both before and after the final from Brent Town Hall: Mike Marino v Yuri Borienko, Johnny Yearsley v Roy St Clair and Adrian Street v Terry Jowett.
Random points worth adding....
Senior BBC engineering staff have said since that one of their biggest disappointments was that colour wasn't brought forward to be in place for the final stages of the tournament. It could have happened apparently; had there been the will at higher level it's feasible that the final could have been captured in colour even if not broadcast.
I'd always thought that BBC & ITV used separate cameras for the final, like they always did for FA Cup Finals when I watched them in the 70s & into the 80s. I may have got this impression from seeing poor quality 405 ITV recordings to compare with the BBC's 625. I have the BBC 2 hour 625 lines recording of the final on videotape somehwere, from a BBC programme broadcast just before Euro 96, and which I believe was first (re-)broadcast in July 1976 as part of the BBC's celebrations of 40 years of regular broadcast tv, which coincided with the tenth anniversary of the match
A reason for what to a modern viewpoint is a very underwhelming attitude to the final is that The World Cup was quite a recent addition to world sports having only started up again post-war for the 1954 tournament, and England via The FA had not been entirely keen on the competition until 62. When England did win in 66 it was seen as about time and quite reasonably the first of many to come. Ask anyone involved in football back then if 1966 would represent the national team's only trophy until at leat 2014 and you'd have been mocked harshly. It's impossible to say but had England won in Mexico in 1970 (instead of losing the quarter final from a winning position having been kept awake the previous night and with the first choice keeper being out with food poisoning, widely thought of as being a result of sabotaged food), England could have won, would probably have qualified for both the 74 and 78 finals and the last 40+ years might have been totally different. Or we might have still suffered from not investing and moving with the times and continuing to believe that only we knew how the game should be played and all these foreign johnies were hopelessly wrong.
As an addendum to a comment about FA Cup Finals being on BBC1 in monochrome and BBC2 in colour, I thought the 69 final between Leicester City and Manchester City had been the first to be broadcast in colour on 2 and b/w on 1. Willing to be corrected obviously.
According to the link posted by Steve Williams they didn't show any of the games - maybe it's a mistake,couldn't have been a contractual problem as they were part of the ITV network.
Re BBC colour: BBC did not have any colour OB units until the summer of 1967 when Wimbledon was televised in colour for the first time on BBC2. Doubt the units were even built at the time of the World Cup Final although, as mentioned, ATV had a colour OB unit based at Elstree.
They did that in 1968 as well.
I think Channel's maximum potential audience was 140,000, If we assume they would only have got 10% of audience (as that was overall figure split) they would have had 14,000 viewers. Probably cost too much to be worthwhile.They always had to run on a tight budget, and maybe each ITV company had to contribute to the expense of mounting the coverage (for the whole tornament) If they thought they would be out of pocket they wouldn't have taken it.
That's possible.
TV-am refused to pay a share of the cost of the Los Angeles Olympics, on the quite sensible grounds that none of the events was taking place between 6am and 9.25am, so it wouldn't benefit from the audience.
The rest of the network retaliated by refusing to allow TV-am any access to its feeds, reporters or other resources, and even made them leave the room at Heads of Sport meetings when the Olympics was being discussed.
TV-am wasn't really bothered by this. It was a member of the EBU in its own right (as most of the ITV regions still are today), so got all the pictures it needed without paying a penny.
But ITV pulled out completely from covering the LA Olympics, the last straw was a dispute about the number
of production assistants that were proposed to be on site.
The only 'coverage' was as news on ITN's bullitens
I don't think that's correct because the editor Clive Jones actually resigned because of that, as TVam were certainly intending to cover it, they even said they were going to get the likes of Telly Savalas and Michael Caine in to commentate for them. And while it wasn't taking place during TVam time, because most of the action was overnight, breakfast was going to be when most people would see the action, so it would have played a major role.
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1702240
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/09/olympics-2012-tv-coverage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITV_Sport#Olympic_Games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympics_on_television
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=491749
England and the other home nations had arrogantly refused to play in the three World Cups before the war, believing that they didn't have to play in them to prove that they were the best.
In 1950 Scotland qualified as runners up in the Home Nations tournament, but refused to take part because they didn't win the Home Nations! In 1954 , in Switzerland they did attend but only took 14 players with them leaving 8 reserves at home who could travel in case of injuries to the team .
So not even the 1966 World Cup Final fully survived TV's obsession at the time with wiping as much as possible of its own past?!
ITV never used to capitalise much on that 1966 footage for future tournaments after that, until Des Lynam joined - either it was a co-incidence, or he told them as they had a decent archive, why not use it?
Sorry to be picky, but are you sure it wasn't Sky Sports rather than Granada he was working for by that time? I wasn't aware that Granada were still covering crown green bowls as late as the 1990s, but I believe Hugh worked for Sky's coverage when they took over.
Hugh and Ken were great friends anyway (both were active Freemasons, albeit in different parts of the country), and there was no bitterness between them whatsoever.
Hugh never really stopped working - even in retirement he was a PR man for the South Wales Freemasons. He was never too keen on modern football, though, and only watched it on TV occasionally.
Granada TV covered Crown Green Bowls inparticular until 1995 with the Bass Masters tournament. I went to Ellesmere Port when it held its final event in 1993 and then it was transferred to the Talbot Hotel in Blackpool, a famous Crown Green venue and I was there when Winsford's Glynn Cookson finally won a tv tournament beating Oldham's Andy Buckley in the final.
I spent a bit of time along with Hugh and his co commentator Bryan Brett (a lovely bloke by the way) who covered the sport for the Manchester Evening News.
Granada began covering Crown Green in 1982 with the great Keith Macklin on commentary.
Hugh and Bryan had worked together since I think 1984 on the Bass Masters, the County Classic which was from the Carr Mill Green in St Helens and the one off Crown Challenge, broadcast on the ITV network in 1988 from Blackpool's Marton Institute Green which pitched 16 flat green bowlers into a crown tournament
For Indoor Bowls Hugh and Bryan covered all four of the Superbowl events from Stage One at Granada in Manchester which brought crown players inside for their first time in a major event.
One of the co commentators for the first Superbowl in 1984 was John Freeman, famed for his Face To Face interview series in the 1960's who went on to lead London Weekend TV
Hugh also did bowls coverage for HTV Wales, that included the infamous event at a pairs tournament in Rhyl when two bowlers allegedly threw their match. It may still be available on the net.
BSkyB did cover the Waterloo Handicap a couple of times and as much as I admired Hugh, the Waterloo commentary was synonimous for me with the BBC's Harry Rigby.
To finish on a football note I was intrigued to know how Hugh gleaned his information on teams and players ahead of a major tournament in those days. He intimated that having contacts in the embassies in London always helped in getting statistics from the respective FA's and we shared memories of ITV football shows such as Kick Off from Granada, ATV's Star Soccer and Sports Arena on HTV
Thanks for clearing that up. Is this the Rhyl clip you were talking about?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hI8xsV04U0
Granada did indeed cover the Waterloo Cup during the 2000s, but although it used Sky Sports graphics, it was made by an independent production company. It was presented by Elton Welsby, with commentary from John Gwynne (alongside someone else, I can't remember who). Gwynne recently announced he will be leaving Sky's darts commentary team after this summer's World Matchplay Championship.
I'm fairly sure I've read obituaries of Hugh Johns where it stated he worked on Sky's bowls coverage during the 1990s, so that would fit in with the info you've provided.
I also heard Hugh commentating on HTV Wales's local boxing coverage as late as the late 1990s, after he had retired from 'Soccer Sunday'.
The 1954 World Cup was televised by the BBC as part of the then-new Eurovision network which involved eight countries.The Winter Olympic Games at Cortina were also televised in 1956.