This is taken from Times Online, June 7, 2010:

Robert Hudson: broadcaster
Broadcaster of quiet authority on a variety of subjects who was a pioneer of ball-by-ball cricket coverage

Robert Hudson, a radio broadcaster of impeccable professionalism in the best traditions of the BBC, was for many years a well-known voice at important cricket and rugby union matches and an exemplary commentator on State occasions. A man of transparent integrity whose reserved manner and innate modesty meant that he became less of a celebrity than his great ability would otherwise have guaranteed, he was content to become mainly an administrator in the later stages of his career, notably as a wise, determined and effective head of Outside Broadcasts.

In that role he rose calmly above the often petty politics of the corporation, unifying the Outside Broadcasts (OB) department with its hitherto rival, Sports News, and making long-term appointments that included Peter Baxter as producer of Test Match Special (TMS) and Christopher Martin-Jenkins as BBC cricket correspondent. It was Hudson who persuaded Brian Johnston to join the TMS team on a regular basis in 1970 after television producers had unwisely deemed him to be too frivolous, thus ushering radio ball-by-ball cricket commentary into its most popular era.

An incident in his own early days as a commentator made Hudson the catalyst for ball-by-ball commentary. In 1955 at Scarborough he was coming to the end of a strictly timed half hour stint of regional commentary when Fred Trueman took two wickets in two balls for Yorkshire against Nottinghamshire. Only by a whisker was there time to describe the hat-trick ball that duly followed, seconds before it was necessary to hand back to the Home Service.

The incident prompted Hudson to write to Charles Max-Muller, then head of OBs, suggesting continuous coverage of Test matches. His memo struck a chord: from 1957, albeit at first only by switches from one station to another, the BBC was able to use the slogan: “Don’t miss a ball, we broadcast them all”.

Robert Cecil Hudson was born in 1920 in Golders Green, the son of a London solicitor and his wife, the daughter of a naturalised wool broker from Frankfurt. His uncle, Sir Robert Hudson, was secretary of the National Liberal Federation in its victory year 1906 and, during the First World War, chairman of the joint finance committee of the British Red Cross Society. Hudson’s early interest in broadcasting was recorded by his elder brother, Derek, an author and journalist, in his autobiography, Writing Between the Lines, published in 1965.

“The aerial outside the nursery window led to a crystal set, and it was a wonder to engage the obdurate surface of the ‘crystal’ with the ‘cat’s whisker’ and conjure words and music from 2LO into our earphones. By the time my brother Robert — a true child of the wireless — was growing up, the earphones had been superseded; I remember how closely he listened to cricket commentaries, his ear glued to the loudspeaker. Before very long he was imitating the announcers and commentators with uncanny fidelity, and eventually he went so far as to make several private records of his parodies (Stuart Hibberd came to listen to one of them, and I am not sure that he was greatly amused). I was not surprised that when opportunity offered he became a BBC commentator himself; and now I suppose other little boys are imitating him.”

After being educated at Heath Mount Preparatory School, Shrewsbury, Hudson spent seven years in the Army, rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Artillery and serving in Malaya during the Second World War. Having obtained a postwar degree from the London School of Economics he shone sufficiently at a BBC audition in 1946 to become a freelance commentator on cricket and rugby but he also became a corporate member of the Institute of Personnel Management and was personnel officer at the Regent Oil Company and the Glacier Metal company.

He joined the BBC staff as as senior Outside Broadcasts producer in 1954. Famously fastidious in his research and therefore never at a loss for what the BBC called “associative material”, he commentated on 55 rugby union internationals between 1947 and 1977, 46 on radio and nine on television. He first commentated on cricket Tests for television in 1949 and continued to do some television matches until 1964 with the likes of E. W. Swanton, Brian Johnston and Peter West; but from 1962 to 1968 his chief medium was radio. Listeners could be sure of an accurate, balanced authoratitive description, ball by ball, with few digressions from the cricket.

He also covered the Boat Race three times and became the master of the state occasion. He broadcast from 31 countries, covering six royal tours by the Queen between 1961 and 1967, four state visits and four independence ceremonies. Public events that he described for radio included 21 successive Trooping the Colour ceremonies, 16 Cenotaph Remembrance Day services, four state openings of Parliament (Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher), the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday service, the royal weddings of Princess Margaret (1960), Princess Alexandra (1963), Princess Anne (1973) and the Prince of Wales (1981), and the funerals of Sir Winston Churchill (1965), the Duke of Windsor (1972) and Field Marshal Montgomery (1976). For television he covered the annual Lord Mayor’s Banquet, the first and last nights of the Proms, the funeral of Dag Hammarskjöld and President John F. Kennedy’s meeting with the Pope in 1963.

He also presented Songs of Praise, Pick of the Week, Down Your Way, Christmas Bells on Christmas Morning, every year from 1965 to 1981, and, on more than 200 occasions, the Today Programme on Radio 4.
Behind the scenes this unassuming man was successively radio OB producer, head of administration for the BBC North Region, assistant head of OBs from 1960 and head of OBs from 1969 to 1975. In retirement he published Inside Outside Broadcasts in 1993 and lectured on his broadcasting experiences. He lived for 45 years in St Albans and latterly at Hindhead, Surrey.

He also raised around £30,000 for Macmillan Cancer Support, in memory of his wife, Barbara, who died of the disease in 1987.

Robert Hudson, broadcaster and broadcasting administrator, was born on January 30, 1920. He died on June 3, 2010, aged 90