BBC1's top sports programme, Grandstand, is to devote this Saturday's edition to "extreme" sports such as mountain biking and slalom canoeing after discovering that its cupboard of mainstream events was bare. Producers decided to showcase the less well known sports, which are usually relegated to the margins of the schedule, instead of cancelling the programme altogether.

X-Games to be featured on prime time
Skateboarding, BMX biking and in-line skating will feature in the programme, which will be presented by Hazel Irving from the world mountain biking championships in Austria. It also will feature highlights from the X-Games - the extreme sports equivalent of theEuropean championships - held in Barcelona earlier this summer.

The decision to devote a programme to extreme sports is a departure from Grandstand's usual fare of football, athletics and horse racing. Phil Bernie, the editor of Grandstand, said the idea for the programme resulted from a desire to screen such sports, combined with a lack of mainstream events at the end of August. "Apart from the start of the Premiership, August is fairly bare and there was a shortage of contracted major events," he said. Mr Bernie said that if the one-off special was a success, extreme sports might feature again in the main Saturday edition of Grandstand.

Extreme sports gaining wider audiences
Gareth Rees, director of Boomerang, a Cardiff-based production company that makes programmes about extreme sports for Channel 4 and Channel 5, welcomed Grandstand's interest in a wider range of events, but said the BBC would have to work hard to gain credibility among fans of extreme sports.

"It's a fine line to tread, it's really tough doing these sports on mainstream channels. On the one hand the programme has to have a mass appeal, but you also don't want to alienate the fans and participants. Skateboarding is the toughest one because it's so underground. Usually they only like films that are made by their friends, and that's not really the sort of thing that you can broadcast on a mainstream channel."

Expert presenters required
Mr Rees said it was important for the BBC to choose presenters who knew about the sports being covered. "You have to get a presenter who's an expert themselves. Sometimes the BBC just goes for someone who looks and talks well but asks dumb questions."

He said that such sports had potential to have crossover appeal: "The imagery is so strong - often they come from great locations - that makes for very good television. Skateboarding has become colossal in the US. We're usually a couple of years behind, but I think there's a generation of people growing up who are into these sports, and who are not well catered for."

The BBC hired Marc Churchill, a semi-professional skateboarder, to conduct interviews with the participants at the X-Games, but was told he would not be allowed on to the course unless he competed - he ended up coming a commendable eighth.

[Source: The Guardian]

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