Whoa, I’d forgotten about the price inflation when Fox/9/10 got the rights in 2001 where it jumped from $40m/year to $100m/year.
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The only negative I can really come up with for 10 is the Lane and Walls Carlton bias. It was pretty bad and not well received by the fans. I remember Quarters getting up Walls about it on their panel show one week.
Other than that though it was great.
In '07 Dennis was great but you could tell early on that there were a couple of problems with 7’s coverage imo. Bruce needed a bit of time to remember how to call - he was really low energy and lacking in confidence initially. Schwartz, Watson and Olarenshaw was one of the most underwhelming special comments teams imaginable and it took a while before Matthews and Buckley were brought in to address it.
Technically it was a bit underwhelming as well iirc. Cut and paste graphics package from their other sports and some odd choices for camera angles from the back pockets and others where the camera was far too zoomed in.
For me, 7’s best years since getting the AFL back were the early 2010’s just before 10 were dumped and 7 expanded their team. They’d ironed out the crinkles by then and had a strong commentary team.
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I remember a match between St Kilda and Sydney in 2005 whereby Walls was critical of Sydney’s defensive/flooding tactics and how it backfired against a powerful St Kilda side whose full-forward Fraser Gehrig kicked seven goals in his 200th match. If I remember correctly, all the post-match talk was about how terrible the Swans played and Walls went as far as saying they couldn’t win the flag with Paul Roos as coach.
We all know how wrong he was proven when they went on to win the premiership in September, after which Roos refused to accept Walls’ apology.
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One thing I wasn’t a fan of with Ten’s AFL coverage was the 5 minute warning and reverting to a count-up clock from that point. Drove my OCD absolutely nuts as it was inconsistent to the rest of the game lol. Funnily enough the count-up clock itself has never bothered me such as when it’s been used on VFL for Seven in the past and before that ABC when it’s been on for the whole game.
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IMO, it added to the excitement of very close matches, such as Chris Tarrant’s post-siren match winner against Adelaide in 2003, Barry Hall’s against the Brisbane Lions in 2005, Nick Davis’ match-winning efforts against the Geelong Cats in 2005, the 05/06/09 Grand Finals, and a draw between Carlton and Essendon in 2011.
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I loved the five minute warning that Ten had. As said above, a great way to ratchet up the interest in the closer games.
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I never liked it.
Maybe if the five minute warning extended to players, coaches and administrators, then it might create some real suspense.
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You had to remember that Seven had to rebuilt its AFL broadcast team from scratch when it regained AFL broadcast rights for 2007. I think Seven was trying to differentiate from Nine/Ten/Foxtel by using odd camera angles.
I do wonder why Seven didn’t re-sign people like Paul Salmon and Terry Wheeler to provide expert comments (they were part of Seven’s team in 2001).
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I enjoyed Nine and Ten better than seven
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Yeah they were definitely trying to differentiate themselves. FNF in particular had a much more serious feel to it when 7 got it back than it did with 9. I never minded the camera angles personally, but the special comments did leave a lot to be desired. Think it helped that Watson and Schwartz were already with the network. Couldn’t understand why Sandy Roberts was never used in their telecasts as a host or commentator- I assume he just didn’t want to.
Another random thing that 7 did back then that was criticised was having the crowd noise far too low and the umpire mic’s way too loud. They were obviously trying to give the viewer the reasoning behind every decision but it didn’t sound good and needed to be tweaked (which took some time iirc).
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I actually kind of enjoyed 9s coverage as well.
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Because they weren’t very good would be my guess. Especially the times they tried using them as pbp callers. Both were terrible, Wheeler was OK with special comments but from memory hadn’t done any media since leaving Seven.
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9WWOS shirt
Also has Australia written underneath as it was worn during coverage of the Men’s 2002 FIFA World Cup.
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At most of the venues at the time (before all the networks were providing clean feeds to the grounds) they’d at least try to block out the countdown clock on the internal screens - but of course that doesn’t stop teams having someone in the box with a stopwatch; it’s not like the amount of time-on taken in Aussie Rules is as ill-defined as it can be (or at least feels like) with soccer at times.
I liked the concept of the 5min warning at the time as something different as a viewer, but given Seven had all-countdown clocks of some sort since roughly 1990* and Nine and Fox Footy (mk 1) didn’t do it either, it was still certainly a gimmick (especially the callers faking that they didn’t know how much time was left, they had to do that but it was hardly believable).
Although I found the 2-minute “red time” that Ten did at the end of the other quarters was somewhat more of a gimmick.
*Of course, I say 1990-ish, but Seven’s was in an era before full-time score bugs, and even in the few years they had ones with time included (talking 1998-2001 - they just had the score in 1997) they didn’t show it all the time. How that’s changed…
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Obviously the technology has changed over time, now the scores and times are expected to be there all the time by younger watchers, but it has not always been that way.
I remember in 2001 and 2002 they would have the full names of the teams (BRONCOS, DRAGONS etc) but when the graphics changed in 2003, they’d change them to abbreviations (BRIS, StGI etc) and it would remain that way until the 2011 graphics change when they reverted to using the full names.
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Seven had the countdown clock display intermittently in 1989, although they used the same graphics package from 1989 right through to 1993. From that famous grand final:
The permanent on-screen score started in 1997 from memory with just the white text in the top corner. This developed into proper graphics the next year with provision for the clock, but again it only displayed intermittently. I think it was Ten in 2002 that first had the clock permanently on-screen (with the aforementioned five minute warning)?
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I’m not even sure if the clock was on-screen permanently everywhere at the start of 2002… I don’t remember Fox Footy or Ten showing it all the time at the start, and Nine’s graphics were very much as Seven’s was before that.
Pretty sure it was there full-time by roughly 2004 I think (don’t quote me on the year, it might’ve been a year later… Fox Footy changed their look to coincide with going “basic”; Ten updated their look very slightly by comparison), and the 5min warning on Ten came in about the same time.
The first one to use a permanent clock bug for AFL probably Optus Vision’s Sports AFL in 1996 or 1997, but that was a count-up clock like at the ground (eg. First Goal | Brett Montgomery | 1997 Round 3 | Western Bulldogs vs Richmond AFL - YouTube, round 3 in 1997). Doubly unusual as they were content with putting scores in just “goals.behinds” format, Irish style, without a total score… shows the audience they were after, though I guess Optus Vision already had the ARL for those north of the Murray.
As an aside, not too long after (roughly '04 or '05), the AFL must have mandated the broadcasters to show the total column on the full scoreboard as “Total” rather than “Points” (or “G, B, Total” instead of “G, B, P” as it had been in the few years before that) - the AFL must’ve been worried that those outside the footy states getting confused about “behinds” and “points” being spoken of as colloquially synonymous? 
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Yep, the original one in that format went back to as early as 1995 (pre-dating the AFL ones); albeit in different typefaces originally until Nine went with that Gill Sans-esque font when it was made standard across the network (originally for the cricket) a little later. A little odd compared to ones of today as it only showed the leader’s team name (which was awkward when it was tied, as they had to pick one!).
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