Football in the Regions: The Beautiful South

Football in the south and south east of England was patchy, but that's not to say that it was uneventful.

With the serenity of the rolling fields of Kent, the South Downs National Park and the New Forest all sitting comfortably within its boundaries, one might expect that the history of commercial television in this part of the country to have been peaceful. However, the South of England (later South & South-East of England) franchise proved to be one of the most controversial in the entire history of the patchwork of companies that made up the ITV network. This is a region for which the identity of the local broadcaster changed twice in a little more than a decade, and for which the story takes in hubris, entitlement and petulance, an attempt to become a global media giant and, eventually, near financial collapse.

From a sporting perspective, however, it would with the best will in the world a stretch to describe the South of England to be anything like a sporting hotbed. Despite the vastness of its geographical reach – from Dorset in the west to Kent in the east – the South of England franchise holder would only oversee coverage of seven clubs – Aldershot, Bournemouth, Brighton, Gillingham, Portsmouth, Reading and Southampton – with an eighth and ninth, Southend United and Oxford United, being shared with the East Anglia and Midlands regions respectively.