It's A Knockout and Jeux Sans Frontières rounded off another decade, one which undoubtedly saw both series at the height of their popularity. The 1979 series of It’s A Knockout saw the introduction of a new colourful sunshine-themed scoreboard, and new costume characters in the form of the Conks - large oval shaped creatures with huge noses - and the Giant Chefs.

Jeux Sans Frontières also witnessed changes this year, with the introduction of a new Joker scoring system. 1979 turned out to be a good year for British teams, too.

Eagle-eyed viewers might have recognised the infamous misspelling of 'It's A Knockout' as 'Its's A Knockout' in the revised animated title sequence shown at the beginning of each International Heat this year. The mistake went unnoticed, or possibly it was not thought to be an error serious enough to correct, and to compound the error the same typo appeared for the whole 1980 series too. As if that was not enough, when the very last programme of the first phase of Jeux Sans Frontières, the 1982 International Final, was transmitted, it opened with the 1979-1980 animation with the 'Its's A Knockout' caption, despite the sequence having been updated (and corrected) at the start of the 1981 series after the West Germans left the series.

JSFnetGB Series Guide pages researched by
Neil Storer and Alan Hayes
with Ischa Bijl, Julien Dessy, Sébastien Dias, David Hamilton, Denis Kirsanov, Paul Leaver, Philippe Minet,
Christos Moustakas, David Laich Ruiz, Marko Voštan and JSFnet Websites