"We have to assume this will be a loss leader for ITV."The loss is a huge personal blow to the BBC's new director general Greg Dyke, who had said he was keen to retain Premiership football when he was appointed last year.Former BBC managing director Sir Paul Fox described the news as the biggest blow BBC Sport had ever suffered. "It eclipses the loss of the FA Cup final, Test cricket, Formula One motor racing and all the other things that the BBC has lost.". Match of the Day, the longest- running and most popularfootball programme on British television, is to come to an end because the BBC has lost the rights to broadcast highlights from Premier League matches. Match of the Day, the longest- running and most popularfootball programme on British television, is to come to an end because the BBC has lost the rights to broadcast highlights from Premier League matches. The corporation's current four-year contract, for which it paid £73m, expires in May next year. Last night ITV announced that it has secured the rights to highlights for three years from the start of the 2001-2002 season for £183m. The BBC's losing bid was £123m.The highlights package was one of three deals announced yesterday. The main Premier League TV deal, for 66 live games per season over three years, was retained by BSkyB, which paid £1.11bn.

BSkyB's current four-year deal cost the satellite broadcaster £670m.A second package of live rights has been sold to the cable company NTL, which will broadcast 40 matches on a pay-per-view basis. The loss of Match of the Day, which started on BBC2 as a 45-minute highlight package in 1964, is a huge blow to the BBC, not least after losing the rights to Formula One motor racing, Test match cricket and England rugby union internationals in recent years.Richard Scudamore, the chief executive of the Premier League, said: "Match of the Day is a national institution. It is sad [to see it end] but this has been a fair and open process."Yesterday's announcement comes after years of wrangling between broadcasters, both terrestrial and satellite. The most important consequence of the new deals for supporters is likely to be some increase in the amount they pay to subscribe to Sky and the amount they will have to pay if they want to watch games on NTL.The biggest winners are undoubtedly the League's 20 clubs, which will share the vast majority of the £1.65bn that the League will receive from the deals announced yesterday.. A hundred years ago, as schoolchildren laboriously practised their copperplate from handwriting copybooks, to acquire a pleasing and elegant hand was both a virtue and a necessity. A century on, however, the art of handwriting struggles for prestige - and time - in a packed national curriculum.

With the rapid rise of the computer, the question may well be asked: for how much longer will we need to pay handwriting much attention at all? A hundred years ago, as schoolchildren laboriously practised their copperplate from handwriting copybooks, to acquire a pleasing and elegant hand was both a virtue and a necessity. A century on, however, the art of handwriting struggles for prestige - and time - in a packed national curriculum. With the rapid rise of the computer, the question may well be asked: for how much longer will we need to pay handwriting much attention at all? Modern British hands, according to handwriting specialist Rosemary Sassoon, are considerably less "handy" than in the past. In one sense, that is a sign of progress, in that a highly technological society no longer needs human hands to carry out many of its jobs. But the downside is that, when it comes to using our hands, our lack of practice can make tasks such as handwriting far more difficult.Young children are particularly affected. Ms Sassoon reports that, after more than 20 years studying children's hands, she now finds the hands of children who are just starting school less ready for writing."Children are doing much less explicit hand-work before they start school, and their hands are less agile as a result," she says.