TV coverage of tennis is missing the point
Roar Rookie
By Matthew Stephen, 22 Jan 2010 Matthew Stephen is a Roar Rookie
- Tagged:
- Australian Open, Fox Sports, hopman cup, Lleyton Hewitt, Tennis
Another Australian Summer of Tennis, and yet again, viewers have fallen victim to coverage that is not giving the audience the best possible experience.
Unlike previous years, Fox Sports this year will not telecast any of the Australian Open, leaving viewers the option of watching only one match provided by Channel 7.
Not only this, but Channel 7 has decided not to use their digital channel for tennis coverage, but remain with regular programming.
It has been reported that 7 offered Foxtel some of the telecast rights of the tournament. Foxtel declined due to the cost 7 were demanding.
This has been costly for the tennis lovers throughout Australia.
At least for the first week of the tournament, there needs to be at worst one other option for viewers.
Unless you were at the Hisense arena on Wednesday night, you would have missed one of the classic matches of recent times between two quality players in number 4 seed Juan Martin Del Potro and American James Blake, which finished with Del Potro victorious 10-8 in the fifth set.
How about the ‘press red’ option, for at least the first week?
Moreover, 7 have consistently stopped their telecast halfway through matches, including Australian Lleyton Hewitt’s second round Australian Open match before the conclusion, to go straight to their news coverage.
7 aren’t the only network to do this – the ABC failed to show the final moments of the Hopman Cup final in Perth, instead going to their 7pm news before showing the ending at 730 – delayed.
The biggest loser through all of this is tennis. And with the tennis season in Australia lasting less than a month, there needs to be a greater level of coverage.
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- Explore:
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Cracker said | January 22nd 2010 @ 8:35am | Report comment
Agreed.
I’m not a big fan of the channel 7 commentry either, particularly the yanks.
Mick said | January 22nd 2010 @ 11:03am | Report comment
The commentary I can handle with exception of Sandy Roberts, he must of had his used by date extended
Would be good if we see other games as well but ch-7 thinks there is only 1 game at a time
Malibu77 said | January 22nd 2010 @ 11:14am | Report comment
Couldn’t agree more. TV coverage is very disappointing and one again we get better coverage of sporting events outside of Aus (eg Wimbledon) than we do of those here. During the first week of the open there are matches scheduled at 7.30pm (on Margaret Court Arena) which are ideal for pay TV but we don’t get to see them. Shame 7 network. Shame.
On a related topic, why is it that our Davis Cup team gets TV coverage (despite languishing in the zonal groups), yet the Fed Cup team doesn’t rate a mention in any media. The team of Molik, Dokic, Dallacqua, Stubbs etc could even win the thing one year soon but we will hear or see nothing of it anywhere! Such double standards in this country when it comes to womens sport are a disgrace.
buck said | January 23rd 2010 @ 8:58am | Report comment
i am watching less tennis this open becasue there is no foxtel coverage. I too cannot handle seven’s commentators – Sandy Roberts (is its?) especially – and the adverts. i can handle ads popping up on screen but it is their comments about the shows which are annoying – i just hit mute when an ad pops up during the match.
i agree with above comments that the first week in particular needs foxtel coverage.
I agree too with Malibu re the lack of coverage for the women’s national team comp. Has fox ever shown them??
Matthew Stephen said | January 23rd 2010 @ 9:33am | Report comment
This Australian Open has sadly proved what the networks think of the females game. The mens match is on before the females most nights and by the time that is over everyone is off to bed. I was at the Nadal match last night where 15000 were there for it and the stadium cleared out before the womens match. By the end there were 2000 people in RLA – be it at 130am. This is a sign that the womens competition isnt rated by the networks and that is why we dont see any Fed Cup action which is sad.
Robbo said | January 23rd 2010 @ 9:53am | Report comment
We don’t see more womens tennis on TV because no one wants to watch it. The men’s game at least has variations and characters and nationalities. The womens game is almost always an Eastern European playing another Eastern European. Except for the Williams sisters and Henin/Clijsters it’s all the same.
Steve said | January 25th 2010 @ 3:27pm | Report comment
In (a very minor) defence of Channel 7, under current legislation broadcasters are not able to show Australian Open matches on their multichannels, unless they have already been shown on their main channel (i.e. they can’t show exclusive live content on their multichannels if that content is on the anti-siphoning list) – this was part of a quid pro quo back in 2006 to protect the interests of pay TV, and also to ensure that people who didn’t have digital TV didn’t miss out on live sport.
Crazy Dave said | January 26th 2010 @ 10:06pm | Report comment
I have said this on a different posting here in the last few days, but the idea is relevant to this posting as well….
Can’t wait till TV can give us a choice here… Turn your TV on, select the channel which is showing the Grand Slam, and then pick which court you want to watch…. with commentators or without… but always with crowd and player/umpire noise… we can already do that with the Internet, watch the scores at any court you want, on the website of the Grand Slam… How long till TV can do it? They already have cameras at every court….