World in Action output. For the first 35 years of its existence, ITV had a near-monopoly of television advertising revenue. Roy Thomson, who ran Scottish Television famously described ITV as a "licence to print money". In return for this income, the broadcasting regulator insisted that the ITV companies broadcast a proportion of their programmes as public service TV. Out of this was born the network's reputation for serious current affairs, eagerly grabbed by programme makers under Granada's founder Lord Sidney Bernstein. Some of the most prominent figures in 20th-century British broadcasting helped to create "World in Action", in particular Tim Hewat, "the maverick
On the Ball (UK TV programme) On the Ball (UK TV programme) On the Ball is a British ITV Saturday lunchtime television show about football, which ran as part of "World of Sport" in the 1970s and 1980s, and as a stand-alone show from 1998 to 2004. There was another ITV television show called "On the Ball" which was a game show hosted by Nick Weir in 1997, shown only in the Granada region. The original "On the Ball" was a half hour football round-up segment shown as part of the "World of Sport" Saturday afternoon sports programming on ITV, preceding the traditional Saturday afternoon 3