To find a time when sport created such a sense of national pride and euphoria you have to go all the way back to 1966 and England winning the World Cup on home soil.

There have been many special sporting moments since then but surely nothing that compares to the events of this year.

Much has been said and written about the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. It was billed as the ‘greatest show on earth’ and it's difficult to imagine how they could have gone any better.

Mark Cavendish was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2011. Photo: PA

But the year of sport was not defined solely by the brilliance of these Games. We have been spoilt with so much sporting drama and unprecedented success across many sports.

The power of sport to unite the nation has never been so evident.

And so BBC Sport will be celebrating and reliving these events with our biggest ever Sports Personality of the Year on the evening of Sunday, 16 December.

We will be broadcasting live on BBC One, BBC One HD and BBC Radio 5 live from Excel London in front of a record crowd of more than 15,000 people.

It’s a huge privilege to bring the sporting curtain down on 2012 and we hope it will be a fitting finale to one of the most enthralling and memorable 12 months in the history of sport in the United Kingdom.

This year also sees some changes to the show.

Given the calibre and number of potential candidates this year has produced, we have decided the 2012 shortlist will consist of 12 sportspeople, two more than usual.

As in previous years, the winner will be voted for by the public during the live BBC Sports Personality of the Year programme, giving everyone a chance to back their favourite.

We also committed to review the shortlisting process for this year’s event following the controversy of an all-male list in 2011.

It was the first time that the system had thrown up this sort of anomaly, although no-one could deny that Mark Cavendish was a very worthy winner of the award and the clear choice of the general public.

We wanted a wide range of input into the review so over the last 12 months, assisted by some of my senior BBC colleagues, I have consulted with a wide range of people on the subject including BBC Audience Councils, former nominees and various representatives of the sports media and sporting bodies.

Amongst all the discussion and debate two key messages in particular shone through.

Firstly, there was a consensus that the BBC itself should be better represented and have more control in the shortlisting process to ensure there are no more anomalies of the sort we saw in 2011 - in the previous system the BBC had no input other than to administer the voting process.

Our research also showed that there were many options and views about how that control should be exerted. We thought long and hard about the right way forward, to ensure the show maintains its credibility as the definitive review of the sporting year.

We have decided to evolve the shortlisting process through the introduction of an expert panel. The panel will be asked to devise a shortlist that reflects UK sporting achievements on the national and/or international stage, represents the breadth and depth of UK sports and takes into account ‘impact’ within and beyond the sport or sporting achievement in question.

The 2012 panel will comprise:
*Me, in my role as Director of BBC Sport (Chair)

*The BBC’s Head of TV Sport (Philip Bernie)

*The Executive Editor of BBC Sports Personality of the Year (Carl Doran).

*A representative from BBC Radio 5 Live - this year, Eleanor Oldroyd.

*Three national newspaper sports editors (to be rotated annually) - this year, Mike Dunn (The Sun), Lee Clayton (Daily Mail) and Matthew Hancock (Observer)

*Three former nominees (to be appointed annually) - this year, Sir Steve Redgrave, Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson and Denise Lewis OBE

*A pan-sports broadcaster/journalist - this year, Sue Mott

*Baroness Sue Campbell, Chair of UK Sport.

The panel will endeavour to produce a shortlist based on reaching a consensus view. If a consensus view cannot be reached on all or some of the candidates, then they will be asked to vote for the remaining candidates.

We are extremely grateful to the sports editors of the national press that were the crucial part of the previous system. They are still closely involved, on a rotational basis, occupying three out of the 12 places. Their perspective and enormous wealth of experience is critical to the legitimacy of the shortlisting process.

I am in no doubt that the assembled panel will produce a shortlist that meets the criteria set down. The members of the panel bring a wide and diverse range of expert sporting knowledge through a combination of permanent seats and rotational participation.

When we reviewed the shortlisting process, a few people suggested that we should adopt two awards - male and female - whilst others have suggested there should be separate awards for Olympians and Paralympians.

We have decided to keep with tradition and not risk devaluing the success of any particular sportsperson, so we have retained the format that has served the nation well for 58 years, of one overall Sports Personality of the Year award.

The expert panel will also decide the Team of the Year, Coach of the Year and the Overseas Personality Award.

One of the most notable features of sport is the passion it instils as people discuss what they have watched, listened to or read. I can’t wait for the panel to convene and open up the debate over these awards. I hope a day will be long enough.

Over the last 12 months there has been plenty of discussion about BBC Sport's relocation from London to the north west of England but more recently the spotlight has fallen on sports rights and the question being asked by many of you - how can BBC Sport with its reduced budget hope to compete for the best sport rights? You may have seen the article in the Guardian which posed exactly this question.

Today's announcement is a timely and very clear response to that question. In a nutshell our strategy is to be the home of sporting moments that unite the nation and I hope we've demonstrated this through our other recent acquisitions. To add to our renewal of the Premier League TV highlights we have also secured:

• Wimbledon Championships to 2017: extending our partnership with the AELTC to the 90 year mark, the longest ever in the history of sports broadcasting. Our coverage of this iconic event is complemented by our broadcast of the AEGON Championships from The Queen's Club (to 2017) and the ATP Tour Finals.
• Six Nations Rugby Union Championship to 2017: a tournament that every year brings the nations of the UK together in a popular yet fiercely competitive way, quite unlike anything else the BBC does.
• Open Golf Championship to 2016: over 40 hours of HD coverage will be shown this year delivered by in excess of 60 BBC cameras located around the Royal Lytham & St Annes course. This contract sits alongside a three year agreement for coverage of the Masters and a four-tournament deal for the Ryder Cup through to 2018.
• Euro 2012 & Fifa World Cup 2014: the two biggest international football tournaments will both be broadcast live across the BBC's TV, radio and online services.
• Formula 1 to 2018: the new shared rights deal is bedding down with strong audiences for both the live races and extended highlights.
• London Olympics 2012 & Glasgow Commonwealth Games 2014: two major international sporting events both on UK soil over the next two years.
• World Athletics Championships: a deal which includes the return in 2017 of the world's elite athletes to the magnificent Olympic stadium in Stratford.
• Test Match Special to 2019: a unique part of BBC Sport's output for over 50 years. Distinctive, innovative and full of wit and charm, completely at home in a digital age. This season we are also providing live commentary every week of county cricket matches on 5 live sports extra.
• Rugby League Challenge Cup to 2016: continuing a successful relationship with the sport that extends now for over half a century.
• London Marathon to 2018: one of the most important events in the athletics calendar and an integral part of BBC Sport's cross-platform strategy. We have also extended our rights to cover the Great North Run to 2018.

This is not a comprehensive list as there are many other sports that provide genuine breadth to BBC Sport's rights portfolio and are much loved by audiences - Football League highlights, snooker, darts and MotoGP are just a few such examples.

With a finite budget our aim is to secure the most iconic and treasured events for the longer term. We believe that the BBC has a compelling story to tell rights holders about what we can bring to their sport; and that goes beyond just paying a competitive rights fee. The exposure that the BBC offers a sport is unrivalled by any other broadcaster in the UK - the 13 million-plus unique browsers of our sport website every week, the 6 million-plus listeners of 5 live, our extensive sports news coverage and the buy-in from across the breadth and depth of the BBC's services.

I was shown some research recently that also brought home this point - in the digital world where 24-hour TV sports channels proliferate, the BBC may have accounted for only 2% of total sports broadcast hours last year but we delivered over 40% of total sports viewing hours.

So there is now huge choice for audiences and we know from our research that licence fee payers expect to see high quality sport on the BBC. But a reduced budget should not be seen as a weakened commitment to sport - the BBC will be spending more than £2 billion on sport over the next five years.

We are also very privileged to have received a significant investment recently in order to build our new production base in Salford. Match of the Day, Football Focus, Final Score, 5 live Sport, our sports news output, the BBC Sport website, the Red Button and connected TV services are all up and running. Even our big outside broadcasts - including the London Olympics and Euro 2012 - could not happen without the critical back engine in Salford.

BBC Sport's commitment to serious and robust sports journalism is an integral part of our future strategy. If you are reading an article on the BBC Sport website, watching a sports bulletin on the News Channel or listening to one on the World Service, the production will be taking place from the new flagship 'BBC Sport Centre'. The BBC Sport Centre has been configured to put the production facilities on show - as the on-screen backdrop and visitors to the site will testify. When you next catch a news bulletin, look at the screens behind the presenter to see all the live sports feeds coming in from every corner of the globe. The global weekly reach of the BBC Sport Centre is now well in excess of the 100 million mark - we hope you like the new look.

We have been treated to some fantastic football in recent weeks. With all the drama and tension of the final day of the Premier League, the Football League play offs and the Champions League final it might be easy to forget that another major football tournament, Euro 2012, kicks off in a little over two weeks time. BBC Sport will again be providing extensive coverage on BBC TV, radio and via the BBC Sport website.

There is a lot of sport to look forward to on the BBC in the coming months and of course the greatest show on earth comes to London in just 63 days' time. Why not find out more about the Torch Relay and the 2500 hours of sporting action we have on offer...

BARBARA SLATER IS THE DIRECTOR OF BBC SPORT

First of all, it's timely that there is a question here that relates to rugby union coverage, specifically because just this week we announced a significant autumn season of rugby on the BBC spanning BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, Radio 5 Live, BBC Sport Online and BBC Red Button.

All of the Wales and Scotland matches will be broadcast live, while there will be highlights of England's matches against Australia, Argentina and New Zealand.

This weekend I'm also delighted that we've got international rugby league back on the BBC when the England and Australia game is broadcast live - this being the first rugby league international on our network for nine years.

In relation to the NFL query: we show and are showing the Superbowl final live and in the past we have indeed shown the Wembley NFL game as a simulcast broadcast with Sky. This year, though, we felt it was better value for licence fee payers if we showed this clash as a highlights package.

Sport on the BBC has a number of roles and it is not always to chase ratings but to provide coverage of mass popular sports as well as those that would not get the same exposure elsewhere. So while not every sport is to everyone's liking, we're attempting to attract a cross section of licence fee payers.

The Government's listed events review is currently ongoing and the results should be known by the end of the year, but you can look at our submission in full here, which should answer some of your questions.

As for the question about more details on specific events - a lot of these are still in the planning stages, but you will hear more about them as they start to be confirmed.

To read more or comment on this post go to the About The BBC blog.

It has been an exhilarating few months for BBC Sport but also a challenging one with the planning of significant outputs such as the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the 2012 London Olympic Games and the move to Salford all in the pipeline.

These challenges are being met in a sports broadcasting climate that is significantly evolving, with a number of major issues taking centre stage.

Today, in Westminster, I addressed a group of MPs and experts on one of the most emotive issues currently facing the industry - the government's review of listed events legislation.

For the BBC, the debate on the review is very simple.

Free-to-air listed events benefit audiences in a way that few other television events can manage. The arguments for protecting these events of major national resonance, such as the Olympics and Wimbledon, are as relevant today as they were when the system was first put in place.

In a diverse society and fragmenting media landscape, a big sporting moment is one of the few places where people can come together and unite. Major sporting events available on a universal, free-to-air basis must continue to be a cornerstone of our public service broadcasting system and are arguably more important than ever.

And we know that audiences agree.

Research has also told us that there are a core group of fans who are willing to pay to watch sport on television, but that leaves millions who only watch sport on free-to-air-channels. A significant majority of viewers would be lost to sport if they had to pay for it and in that context I believe that making major changes to the current listing structure would irreparably damage the cultural fabric of the UK.

We want to maintain access to sport for people who don't want to pay subscriptions; and, even more crucially, we see it as a public service commitment to help bring different and less mainstream sports to our mass-audience channels.

So with that, I'd like to move on to talking about all of the other things BBC Sport has on its plate at the moment.

In 2008 the BBC broadcast 1,077 hours of sport on terrestrial TV and 3,500 on our interactive services. On radio we broadcast 4,300 hours of output on 5 Live and 5 Live Sports Extra. We currently show a total of around 57 varieties of sport a year. We are also in the throes of a revolution in the way in which audiences expect their content delivered. Alongside television, that means online, mobile and red button services playing an important role in delivering our content as the national broadcaster.

As we are currently focused on events such as the Vancouver Winter Olympics in February 2010, next year's Football World Cup in South Africa and of course London 2012 - the most important planned event in the UK in our lifetimes and the biggest challenge ever to face BBC Sport - cross-platform services are crucial for all broadcasters in order to fully serve audience demands.

The Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg will host the 2010 World Cup final

But there is another serious issue which I feel the BBC can play a role in and it is one that is affecting the future of this nation's health.

The British Heart Foundation has recently released research which shows that just one in eight children benefits from the recommended amount of daily exercise.

Their study concluded that more than two-thirds of all British children will suffer from obesity by 2050.

This is a pressing and serious issue and both individuals and organisations can play an important role. Families, of course, are crucial in this, but government, schools and councils have an important part to play too.

Ipsos MORI research indicates that watching live sport on TV can genuinely promote interest in sport, with 43% of UK adults saying that they have become more interested in sport as a result of watching it on TV, and for those who never participate in sport the result is 29%.

But the BBC as the national broadcaster can also have an important role here.

The power of high-quality sports broadcasting can be a powerful tool in inspiring young people to take up sport and increase participation across the country.

To read more or comment on this post go to the About The BBC blog.