When he was Executive Producer of Nine’s Wide World of Sports in the 1980s, David Hill, used to have a brass sign on his desk that read: “Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups”.

He was a brilliant and imaginative creator of television. He led and mentored a generation of technicians, camera crews, producers, writers and reporters at WWOS in Australia and then Rupert Murdoch persuaded him to work for him, first in London setting up Sky TV in the late 1980s and then in the US where he ran Fox Sports from 1993.

As he did in Australia, Hill transformed sports coverage in Britain and America, introducing what became known as ‘augmented reality’ to screens.

He started with football broadcasts in the UK by introducing a box on the screen showing the score and the game time.

In America he refined and expanded that into what became the Fox Box or Fox Bug in the network’s NFL games (with the time, scores, timeouts, and later developed it to include win-loss and performance stats, comparisons, etc.)

The virtuosity of Hill’s concept was so powerful that it has become an essential element in virtually every sporting broadcast in the world.

This week in New York, David Hill will receive not one, but two, lifetime achievement awards, one from the Sports Emmys and the other from the US industry bible Sports Business Journal.

Rupert Murdoch called Hill “a dynamic and imaginative leader who has changed the experience of nearly all major sports on three continents. Whether launching Sky Sports, Fox Sports or our regional sports networks, we owe him an enormous debt.”

Adam Sharp, president and CEO of National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, said: “David’s numerous contributions to sports broadcasting have impacted the way sports have been and will be viewed around the world forever”.

Not bad for a boy from Newcastle, NSW!