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Roger Federer of Switzerland, left, is interviewed by Jim Courier after beating Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France to win the Men's singles semifinal match at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Friday, Jan. 29, 2010. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
The doomsayers are preparing the obituary. Tennis in this country is dying – as evidenced by the mammoth drop in television ratings for the Australian Open that shows a 40 per cent decrease in viewers from last year.
The magnitude of such a drop cannot be ignored. And there must be an underlying fault somewhere to explain why there are five million less of us tuning in to the tennis this year compared to last.
For many, it’s simply a reflection of tennis’ diminishing relevance to Australia.
Patrick Smith of The Australian argues: “It (tennis) leaves nothing permanent, brings nothing which can sustain the sport outside its 14 days of fame. Tennis, once one of this nation’s proud and triumphant sports, is now just a shrinking Australian pastime.”
Richard Hind of the Sydney Morning Herald argues that Channel 7 favouring its news programming over the tennis shows the “uncomfortable truth about (the) game’s standing.”
According to Rebecca Wilson: “Tennis has become a game for colourless wimps. Tennis fans are growing tired of watching tedious match after tedious match, between players who are, at best, robotic and, at worst, soft.”
Channel 7, in her opinion, were completely justified in switching from Samantha Stosur’s match with Serena Williams to their news coverage, knowing the candle has burnt out on tennis in Australia.
The fault is with the game, according to these luminaries, not Channel 7.
But it’s too easy, and baseless, to blame this massive drop in viewers on the game itself.
What’s happened in the game in the past twelve months, let alone the last five years, to account for this dip?
The absence of a genuine Australian contender is not a new phenomenon, and while this season’s Open may have not had a story ark that gripped Australia, it still cannot account for a 40 per cent drop.
There have been plenty of points of interest in the tournament, be it the continued rise of the likes Andy Murray and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Justine Henin’s return and Roger Federer’s class.
There is nothing wrong with the tennis product, certainly nothing that can account for such a drop
And if tennis has all of a sudden become robotic, as Wilson claims, how did the popularity of the game, and ratings, survive the Pete Sampras era?
If the game of tennis is struggling, then why the huge outcry over Channel 7’s coverage?
There’s no other indicator beyond television ratings to account for a decrease in the Australian Open’s popularity, with attendances at Melbourne Park increasing by approximately 80,000 over the past five years.
The exodus of viewers for the Australian Open is more of a boycott of Channel 7 than a reflection of tennis’ standing in this country.
Magnified by the absence of Fox Sports’ supplementary Open coverage (Fox Sports having been priced out of a deal by Channel 7), Seven continues to fail to grasp the importance of live coverage.
In the age of Twitter and iPhones (the Open has its own app feeding live scores, which is in the top ten downloaded free apps on the iTunes store), live coverage is paramount. With these technologies growing exponentially in the past 12 months, free-to-air television is starting to pay the price.
Tennis, due to its laborious nature, can easily be skipped over by viewers, especially when they know the live scores.
Seven’s approach to its coverage is as archaic as the anti-siphoning laws that have compounded the issue.
But aside from the delayed coverage, the most obvious flaw in Seven’s coverage continues to be the incessant cross-promotions that have become so embedded in the coverage.
Its intrusive nature has passed the point of acceptability, and the Open has been hijacked by Seven’s quest for ratings supremacy each year.
They’ve ruined the product on show.
The tennis, occurring conveniently just as the ratings season begins, has been the innocent victim of this ploy.
In an online poll run by TV Tonight, also published by The Daily Telegraph, relentless cross-promotions from the network was selected by 23 per cent of the voters as their main gripe with the coverage.
22 per cent lamented Seven’s failure to commit to covering matches live, and a further 20 per cent pointed to the anti-siphoning restrictions.
Only 20 per cent of those polled mentioned the tennis itself.
Seven’s coverage is flawed in so many ways, and they’ve been allowed to get away with it thanks to the backwardness of the legislation that governs Australian television.
This summer of tennis has been completely overshadowed by Seven. They’ve been the talking point of the tournament, be it the delays, the cuts to the newsroom, Henri Leconte or My Kitchen Rules.
Good sports coverage should be anonymous, showcasing what should be the main talking point – the sport. Channel 7 has been anything but anonymous this summer.
They alone are to blame for the damage done to the Australian Open. The game of tennis is the victim here, not the guilty party.