Pre-empted by Central opting out of midweek coverage from August 1983, and TVS following suit for the last midweek coverage of the 1983 season (the UK vs US jockeys' championship at Sandown - the closest thing to the Shergar Cup back then). So they would have lost significant audiences had they not moved - Central was a huge region with a big working-class punter base.
In some ways it was a bit like when they started Test Match Special on the Third Programme's frequencies - using frequencies otherwise unused during the day so general entertainment could continue uninterrupted on the main channel (moving Test cricket off the Light Programme in 1957 enabled it to become more populist a la early ITV; moving racing off ITV enabled it to show US / Australian soaps without interruption, with a notable downturn in the quality and range of ITV's afternoon output).
The interesting thing in retrospect is that back then, and for a long time afterwards, there was a lot of relatively poor Flat racing shown midweek - very little midweek jump racing was shown, and from 1972-1995 pretty much only on the BBC. It may be a sign of shifting powers, in terms of which branch of the sport has had the biggest crossover appeal, that most of that Flat racing is no longer shown terrestrially, whereas the Fridays of what are now the Cheltenham Open and International meetings are still shown.
In some ways it was a bit like when they started Test Match Special on the Third Programme's frequencies - using frequencies otherwise unused during the day so general entertainment could continue uninterrupted on the main channel (moving Test cricket off the Light Programme in 1957 enabled it to become more populist a la early ITV; moving racing off ITV enabled it to show US / Australian soaps without interruption, with a notable downturn in the quality and range of ITV's afternoon output).
The interesting thing in retrospect is that back then, and for a long time afterwards, there was a lot of relatively poor Flat racing shown midweek - very little midweek jump racing was shown, and from 1972-1995 pretty much only on the BBC. It may be a sign of shifting powers, in terms of which branch of the sport has had the biggest crossover appeal, that most of that Flat racing is no longer shown terrestrially, whereas the Fridays of what are now the Cheltenham Open and International meetings are still shown.




(the segments seem weak now)