Derek Brandon

Derek Brandon is a pioneering television producer who founded Cheerleader Productions and made his name producing American football for the UK's Channel 4. The programmes revolutionised the look of sports highlights on television in the UK, with imaginative use of presenters, sets, colourful graphics and, particularly, commercial rock music. The series ran from Channel 4's inception in 1982 until 1988. During this period Brandon also produced a wide range of other sports programmes for Cheerleader/Channel 4 including World Series baseball, British basketball, Australian Rules football, Sumo wrestling from Japan, US Open and Masters golf, and World Championship tennis.

Derek Brandon left Cheerleader to form a new sports production company, Grand Slam Sports, with Patrick Nally (q.v.) and Alan Pascoe (q.v.). He ran Grand Slam Sports from 1988 to 1994, developing sports programming for the UK market, including World Championship and other snooker for the BBC, Champions League and other football for ITV, and World Championship Boxing for ITV. He simultaneously developed world sports production in his role as Director of Television for parent company The Sponsorship Group, producing programmes with The United States Soccer Federation, The Commonwealth Games Federation, and international sports governing bodies including tennis, athletics, golf, triathlon, judo and table tennis.

In 1995 Brandon moved to County Kilkenny in Ireland, where he set up Oblivion Television and produced major horseracing broadcasts for Irish state broadcaster RTE.

Brandon moved back to the UK in 2006 and bought back his first company, Cheerleader Productions, for whom he produced programmes for the pan-African broadcaster GTV, for Sky Sports and for Channel 4.

During his career he has produced and/or directed more than sixty different sports for broadcasters including the BBC, Channel 4, Eurosport, Sky Sports, ESPN, Fox and the EBU.

He is author of the A-Z of Manchester Football (Boondoggle 1978), The Book of Baseball (Sidgwick & Jackson 1987), and editor of Arlott in Conversation with Mike Brearley (Hodder & Stoughton 1986).

Derek Brandon's son James works in the computer video games industry and his younger son Thomas sings in a band. Derek now lives near Cheltenham with his partner Anita, her two daughters and his two greyhounds.

References

see Chris Hughes' history of sport on Channel 4 (Part One 1982–1992): “Suddenly The Refrigerator Was a Bigger Name Than Gary Lineker” :http://offthetelly.co.uk/?page_id=1255

Brandon's work on American Football for Channel 4 is cited in Jeremy Isaac's book Storm Over 4 (p171)

There is a filmography of Brandon's work for Channel 4 from 1970 to about 1990 on the BFI website at 1

The New York Times wrote about Brandon's NFL show at http://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/19/world/london-journal-american-football-fans-often-are-not-amused.html?pagewanted=1