Bryan Cowgill was the BBC’s first head of sport, its most successful Controller of BBC 1 and the managing director of Thames Television during its golden era of programming. He made his mark on British television over a period of 30 years from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s.

Among some of his most striking achievements were his overseeing the BBC’s coverage of the 1966 World Cup Finals in Britain, during which he coined the term “action replay” for the slow-motion video replay which it first introduced in this country, and his remarkable 1984 challenge to the technical trade unions while he was managing director of Thames Television. This led to a handful of managers doing the work of several hundred technicians and maintaining the station’s output during a fortnight-long strike. He will be remembered, too, as a man who whether at the BBC or ITV had a finger on the audience’s pulse when it came to programming: in either place he was capable of dismaying the management of the other.

Bryan Cowgill, or “Ginger” as he was to be known from his hair colouring and fiery temper, was born in Clitheroe, Lancashire, in 1927, where his family owned and ran the weekly newspaper. He attended the grammar school which he left at 15 to work first as a copy boy and then as a reporter with the Lancashire Evening Post and Preston Guardian. With the war on, he enlisted in the Royal Marines where he was subsequently commissioned. As a lieutenant he served in South East Asia from 1945 with the 3rd Royal Marine Commando Brigade.

After demobilisation he edited the family newspaper in Clitheroe until 1955, when he became a trainee production assistant at BBC Television in London.

Within two years he was a producer and director running the BBC’s sports programme Sportsview and producing Grandstand. In 1963 he became head of BBC Sport, and in the following year founded Match of the Day. In the ten years of his tenure of the post he introduced new programmes that included BBC2’s Sunday Cricket and Sportsnight.

During this period he won three Bafta awards for coverage of the Olympics from Rome in 1960, the World Cup in 1966 and the Mexico Olympics in 1968. At the BBC, sport was the pioneer area, a workshop for the development of television equipment and techniques, and Cowgill presided over the introduction of new technology that was to revolutionise live television. Sport was the first user of Eurovision, of satellites, of colour and of videotape.

Undoubtedly the most celebrated of all Cowgill’s sports productions for the BBC was his coverage of the World Cup finals in England in 1966. He coined the term “action replay” to describe an advance that gave a revolutionary and revealing dimension to the televising of sport that has continued to create discussion and controversy.

Cowgill also acted as the conduit through which amateur and professional tennis came together at Wimbledon. Having played an important role in the introduction of Sunday cricket to the schedule of the new BBC2, Cowgill finally succeeded in forging a deal with the Football League to permit First Division football, shot as live on multi-camera, outside-broadcast cameras, and shown on Saturday nights.

Almost all the great commentators in sport from the 1950s and into the 1970s worked for Cowgill, including Richie Benaud, Peter Dimmock, Kenneth Wolstenholme, Keith Miller, Brian Johnston, Henry Longhurst, Cliff Morgan, Bill MacClaren, Eddie Waring, Dan Maskell, Frank Bough and David Coleman.

Cowgill was appointed Controller of BBC1 in 1974 and for the next four years he developed many new and popular formats in drama, light entertainment and documentary. During these years he was responsible for bringing to the screen enduring comedy series such as Porridge, The Good Life and Reginald Perrin; in the documentary field Sailor and Wildlife on One; in drama When the Boat Comes In, All Creatures Great and Small, Poldark and Days of Hope; and in other spheres of programming Jim’ll Fix It, Mastermind, Multi-Coloured Swap Shop and Young Musician of the Year.

From America he introduced such popular series as Kojak and Starsky and Hutch, which greatly boosted the BBC’s ratings, greatly discomfiting the ITV opposition. He also sanctioned the introduction of BBC TV’s first woman newsreader, Angela Rippon.

In 1977 he was offered the job of director of news and current affairs for BBC Television and Radio, a post that carried with it a seat on the BBC board of management.