60 Years Sport Weekend
by Sammy Neyrinck, VRT
In the late summer of 1960, Sport Weekend was broadcast for the first time. Since then it has been one of the longest-running and most popular television programs on the public broadcaster. In four episodes a bird’s-eye view is taken of the image-rich history of Sport Weekend, which is now six decades young, together with the presenters of the past and present.
This second episode takes a closer look at the pioneering years: from the golden sixties to the late eighties of the last century. Archive and interviews with Hugo Symons, Carl Huybrechts, Mark Uytterhoeven, Frank Raes, Louis De Pelsmaeker, Alain Coninx, Ivan Sonck, Dirk Abrams and Dirk De Weert.
Corona, and in particular the first wave in March/April 2020, opened a gap in the sports summer of 2020, but also brought many opportunities. The sports editors of VRT and the VRT archive joined forces and now had the time to highlight the story of 60 years of Sport Weekend! It was an intense period with searching for suitable (digital or not already digitized) visual material, devising the format, arranging recordings coronaproof in different settings, putting together a clever montage with beautiful effects, solving rights issues,… and best of all: lots of memories to pick up and put together.
The series really exudes the atmosphere of that time: how did the sports journalists work then, how innovative were they at times, which moments have stayed with them, … just like the fashion and music of that time reflected in every episode, …
Thanks to the digitization in the past 20 years, the VRT archive was able to offer a solution and ensured that the public that watched Sport Weekend in large numbers all those years could once again enjoy the images of that time, as well as the tasty stories from our unsurpassed presenters from then to now.
The evolution of the program, from the 60s to the present day, everything is contained in these 4 episodes!
