Originally Posted by DUHO:
“And you obviously couldn't be arsed to read my further comment instead but would rather keep having a pop at me
ITV DUMPED ATHLETICS SNOOKER GYMNASTICS ICE SKATING . OK THEY MAY NOT HAVE ENDED UP ON ITV 4 BUT WERE STILL DUMPED SO THATS CLOSE ENOUGH FOR ME............”
Athletics - ITV covered the sport extensively for many years. Interest waned when the early 1990s generation of top British athletes started to retire. A second problem was that big international meetings (what was then the Golden Four), would be shown from 8-9pm on ITV, then coverage would switch to Channel 4 for the 9-10pm hour. ITV's commercial relationship with Channel 4 came to an end and due to the declining fortunes of British athletes by the mid-1990s, ITV didn't feel it made commercial sense to devote two hours to athletics on prime time, often on Friday nights. They continued to show late night highlights and weekend afternoon coverage towards the end of its run.
Snooker - ITV had scheduling problems with snooker from the late 1980s onwards. Michael Grade became the boss at Channel 4, and didn't want ITV dumping its weekday afternoon coverage on Channel 4. ITV wanted to use weekday afternoon slots to show Australian soaps and other programming that attracted a female audience. A second problem was that from the start of the 1988/89 season onwards, ITV was committed to showing top flight football on Sunday afternoons, in slots previously reserved for live coverage of snooker finals.
ITV's snooker coverage continued into the early 1990s (finals were shown on ITV on Sunday afternoons on weeks when the BBC was showing FA Cup matches). They then continued with the Charity Challenge, then towards the end of the decade, they showed the Nations Cup and Champions Cup for a few years, during that rather awkward period where Brian Barwick was in charge of ITV Sport.
In recent years, ITV has increased its coverage of snooker massively. There is now top quality coverage of several major events every season on ITV4. I'd argue they're Britain's best snooker broadcaster these days.
If we're talking about broadcasters 'walking away' from sports, based on your logic, the BBC has 'walked away' from horse racing, cricket and boxing, and Channel 4 has 'walked away' from horse racing, cricket, golf, basketball, baseball, sumo wrestling and American Football.
The fact is all broadcasters have picked up and dropped various sports for various reasons over the years.