As tennis gets ready for the first Grand Slam tournament of the year in Melbourne, Australia later this month, you would think that Tennis Channel would pick up maybe one or two of the prep tournaments in Australia or New Zealand. Instead, Tennis Channel is showing the Masters Cup Doubles Finals from Communist China that took place last year!
There are the Brisbane International and ASB International Tournaments for the women this week and also the Medibank International in Sydney and Moorilla Hobart in Hobart next week.
For the men, there’s Brisbane, the Chennai Open in India and the Qatar Open all playing this week.
You would think Tennis Channel could pick up at least one of each from the various home networks carrying the tournaments. 7 Network in Australia is doing Brisbane, TVOne is carrying the ASB Tourney in New Zealand. Tennis Channel would not have to send anyone, it could just pay a fee to the networks and we would be able to watch these tournaments here in the States at reasonable hours, just about primetime on the East Coast.
It is carrying the mixed doubles Hopman Cup from Perth, Australia this week, but I would like to see some singles action.
I just checked Tennis Channel’s website and it will carry the finals of Brisbane and Chennai this weekend, but it would behoove TC to pick up the action from the week as well.
It will carry Medibank next week, but the schedule has not been set. In my ranking of the sports specialty networks, Tennis Channel came in dead last of the six I listed. This is one of the reasons why Tennis Channel is stuck in last place. Not enough live tournaments and too much dependence on past action to sustain programming.
I have high hopes for Tennis Channel, but when I see what it pulls during the week, I come off quite disappointed. For a network that bills itself as the Home of the Slams, it also should carry tournaments leading up to the majors. Hopefully, we’ll see better coverage leading up to the French Open in May.
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