Wimbledon 1967 In Colour - BBC2 07/07/67

The 1967 Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships live from SW19 were the first scheduled colour television broadcasts in the UK (and in Europe for that matter). People lucky enough to have a colour TV at the time remarked 'the grass looks so green and realistic' - though the same people had probably turned up the colour control knob on their TV set far higher than it should have been!
Although the BBC had been experimenting with colour TV from the 1950s onwards, it was clear that the American NTSC colour standard - the only one available in the 50s - was far from adequate because the colours tended to drift. It wasn't until the British government chose to adopt the PAL colour broadcast standard in 1966 that the way was opened up for TV set manufacturers to begin production in earnest, for broadcasters to equip their studios and for retail stores to begin demonstrating the wonders of colour TV to the public.
The BBC began regularly broadcasting colour trade test films in PAL during the latter part of 1966 and by Spring 1967 programmes on BBC2 such as Late Night Line Up were being broadcast in colour, albeit not on an official basis.
Then finally on 1st July 1967 BBC2 began its official scheduled colour broadcasts starting with the first Saturday's play of the Wimbledon tennis tournament. It was declared a triumph with perfect life-like colour pictures in what was considered at the time to be 'high definition' 625 line (576 interlaced) 4:3 format. Best of all, the BBC had beaten other European broadcasters to it thanks in no small part to the efforts of the BBC2 Controller - a young David Attenborough - even though a full colour schedule would have to wait until December.
Sadly very few snippets of July 1967's first broadcasts were saved. 2" Quad video tape was very expensive at the time and most live programmes were therefore not recorded. Even for those that were recorded, the tapes were usually wiped later for reuse. Fortunately a few small segments of the 1967 Wimbledon Men's Final survive in the archive. That year John Newcombe of Australia defeated Wilhelm Bungert of West Germany.
The clips shown here include a segment by the BBC presenter Jack Kramer, who was an American tennis legend of the 1940s and 50s.
It wasn't until two years later that the other two British channels (BBC1 and the ITV network) began officially broadcasting on the 'new' 625 lines standard which then enabled them to join BBC2 in colour.
The BBC's classic Wimbledon theme tune 'Sporting Occasion' by Arnold Steck is played at the end of this video. Sporting Occasion is still used, albeit in very shortened form, as the outro of the day's coverage of Wimbledon by the BBC.