The BBC was given a bloody nose by independent TV company London Weekend Television after it snatched soccer rights in a deal worth £5m.
It left the corporation contemplating having to scrap its flagship Match of the Day show after the Football League accepted the rival bid.
BBC chief Alasdair Milne said he was astounded by the £5m TV rights coup and Cliff Morgan, then head of BBC outside broadcasts declared: "It looks like war."
Mr Morgan added: "If they want to play games and have a battle then we will have to draw up a plan for battle. And that's no good for anybody.
"I don't believe this matter is over. As far as we're concerned, it has just begun. This is round one. What we will have to do is talk to the football authorities and to ITV and ask them what the hell is going on."
A spokesman for Yorkshire Television said: "We are all delighted with the London Weekend Television coup on behalf of the network."

THE HEADLINES
Local authorities prepared to bring the latest bid to lengthen the runway at Yeadon Airport before the Government. They planned to extend the main runway from 1,600m to 2,250m to enable them to deal with modern jets and an increase in air traffic from 230 flights a week to 360. The Government had rejected a similar bid two years previously.
The pound fell below $2 on the foreign exchange markets; Des O' Connor Tonight was on the box; Watership Down was on at the cinema and the top selling toy of the year was the 42-inch long 'force beam' light sword, which mimicked the light sabre, made famous in George Lucas's Star Wars film, which was released in May the previous year.
Self-styled psychic and spoon bender extraordinaire Uri Geller stood at the top of Blackpool Tower and attempted to broadcast psychic energy across the UK. Geller promised that people who surrounded themselves with broken watches and radios would be amazed as they miraculously started to work, at precisely 12.30pm on Saturday, November 4. He also said people would be able to bend spoons and other cutlery. Then YEP reporter Steve Burnip tried to 'tune in' to Geller's psychic power but, strangely, found it didn't work.
A 2lb chicken cost 74p, a pack of 12 Oxo cubes cost16½p, a 1.5kg bag of Homepride self raising flower cost 31p and a pack of six Kit Kats cost 27p, all at Tesco, which then had stores at the Arndale Centre, Cross Gates and Garforth.
Concerned Morley councillor Ronald Darrington (Lab) warned his town risked being swallowed up by Leeds if its population continued to grow. He was commenting on plans to allow 14,000 people to live in the town, which then had a population of 44,000.

THE GOSSIP
DJ Noel Edmonds, below left, escaped without injury after his Jaguar XJS sports car suffered a blow-out on the M27. His car veered into the central barrier before Edmonds wrestled back control and stopped, after which he changed the wheel and carried on his way.
Prince Charles turned 30 on November 14 and the world's most eligible bachelor declared: "I'll marry when I'm ready."
Musician Elton John was admitted to London's Harley Street clinic with exhaustion. He arrived by ambulance and the clinic was inundated with calls from well wishers. The millionaire pop star was due to fly to Paris for a hair transplant on November 7 and was also in the middle of promoting his latest album A Single Man.

THE WORLD
Boxer Joe Bugner cried at his wedding to Australian journalist Marlene Carter, 38, in Los Angeles on November 15. The Hungarian-born 28-year-old invited Muhammad Ali to the reception but Ali, who beat him twice in the ring, failed to show.
Helen Karioti, 47, from Greece, was liberated from a dungeon where she had been kept prisoner by her own parents for 29 years. The partially naked woman was found after a neighbour raised the alarm. Her hair was down to her waist, her finger nails were six inches long, she had lost the ability to speak and was mentally deranged. She had been kept in a 10ft cell, which also doubled as a toilet, allegedly as punishment for a teenage love affair. Several of her relatives were arrested.
US-born Gene Tunney, who took the world heavyweight boxing title from Jack Dempsey in 1926 and retired still champion, died in hospital aged 80.

AND FINALLY...
Traffic speed campaigner Leslie Gill, of York, was branded a vigilante by a local police chief after he set up his own road-side radar trap in a bid to slow speeding motorists down. The Acomb resident set up a tripod with camera, TV monitor and hand-held 'radar gun', all of which he later admitted didn't work. However, his ruse had the desired effect of slowing motorists down on the 30mph approach to the city. Mr Gill took up his one-man campaign after his pet terrier was run over on the road, notorious for speeders. But his actions drew this criticism from Supt Harry Pollard, of York Police, who said: "This could be conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace."