Seven Tennis Coverage

What an epic semi final between Nadal and Dimitrov! Apart from the first set which Nadal won easily, the match was thrilling stuff with lots of twists and turns. I thought Nadal hit the shots too hard on several occasions causing the ball to go out, but he also managed to hold on by breaking Dimitrov’s serves.
I don’t understand why Seven got its programming wrong year after year. In the first 12 days of Australian Open, the night session was scheduled to finish at 12.30am AEDT. Last night the men’s semi-final was scheduled to end at 10.30pm AEDT followed by a movie (Centurion), knowing the match could go overtime - it did not finish until 12.45am AEDT! Tonight Seven has only allocated three hours for women’s singles final AND men’s doubles final, from 7.30pm to 10.30pm AEDT. It will be hoping the Williams sisters’ clash will be over quickly.

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Probably safer to have something ready to roll than have them padding out the tennis until they can play some other programming.

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It’s the nature of tennis. A match could be a walk over and someone retire early on the first set… or an epic 5 hour match that goes into the early morning. Can’t predict it so just safer to go roughly 3 hrs and finish at 10:30 I think.

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Ratings for last night’s Nadal-Dimitrov epic are now available on Twitter. Preliminary figures suggest it pulled a similar audience to Federer’s win over Wawrinka the night before. Ratings for last night’s match were also up from the corresponding night last year when it lost to a Twenty/20 cricket game between Australia and India.

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Nine’s cricket commentators wouldn’t know anything about NRL if their life depended on it.

I keep hearing Warnie talking about the AFL though this year…

According to 7, they will be telecasting the Davis Cup on 3-5 Feb 2017.

You do realise that most of their commentators come from the NRL states (NSW, Qld)?

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Michael Slater is a former host of the (admittedly dire) Footy Show and sports radio breakfast host.

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Australian Open officials are predicting they’ll have a worldwide audience of 350 million for this weekends finals.

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Looking forward to tonight’s women’s final,Williams vs Williams,it’s been about 8 years since Venus and Serena played each other in a GF

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Its live sport. It’s impossible to predict how long matches will take. Last night some games were close to 10 mins. Many would have predicted the Nadal vs Raonic to be a marathon but it was done and dusted relatively quickly. Women’s finals have taken under an hour on more than one occasion.

Wow. Do Seven always provide such a tacky pregame entertainment for their Tennis Finals? It is seriously bad. I had to quickly turn over.

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The News finished at 6.30pm in Sydney and Melbourne instead of 7pm. As much as I dislike their one-hour filler news, they should have stuck with it tonight.

Seven’s one hour preview of the Women’s Final is cringe worthy, particularly the pre match entertainment. And Hamish is hosting this preview too. Yikes!

Hopefully it’s a good match

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I did like the special analysis from Rennae Stubbs & Jim Courier though :+1:

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I think that’s all Tennis Australia and the Aus Open’s booking skills. Or lack there of. Not great entertainment

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They certainly do. The overly dramatic music which sounds like it’s been ripped from Braceheart just adds to the cringeworthiness.

Rennae needs to learn not to infuse herself into every second thing she utters. I couldn’t give two hoots how long she’s known certain players, how she convinced others to return blah blah. It’s not all about you, love.

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So did Seven’s cringeworthy build-up go longer than the actual match?

PS: Almost, Basil just said the match went 1:22’

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Seven’s studio is directly in front of main entrance of Margaret Court Arena, with showcourt 3 on the right of screen, as shown on tonight’s interview with Serena Williams after her win.

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HD watermark has slipped down to the bottom right corner at the end of the doubles.

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Yep, HD watermark appears to be automated (timed)?

Unlike the main watermark which somebody is controlling.

Happened a lot dueing AFL telecasts last year, when it would run overtime (to the EPG) & the HD watermark would switch to the bottom right hand corner.

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