Organization: City University of New York/ University Computer Center
Date: Friday, 17 Apr 1992 09:37:03 EDT
From: <BUSBH@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Newsgroups: rec.sport.tennis
Subject: T.V. Complaints

Not long ago I wrote about complaining to the various tennis associations
about the poor television coverage given to tennis tournaments. In Tennis
Week two articles were printed that refer to this topic and may be used
as a guide for all of us to do likewise. Following are the articles:

Art. #1

As an avid reader of your magazine, I find myself writing to you to criticize
ABC's deplorable coverage of both finals of the Lipton International Champion-
ships. I am sure that you must have been just as upset to see ABC cater to the
sponsers with total disregard for its tennis viewers. How else can you explain
ABC missing the first couple of points of the women's final and forever resum-
ing coverage once play had started after the breaks? Coverage of the men's
final was no different. I am sure most viewers would have preferred to have
seen the finals on ESPN.

Is there anything we can do to avoid a repeat of this, or are we forever at
the mercy of the networks' quest for $$$?

(Name withheld, article reprinted without permission.)

Art. #2

ABC Television Network's coverage of the mens final of the Lipton Inter-
national Players Championships was absolutely appalling. Besides the fact
that coverage began more than one game into the match because of a World
League of America Football game running into the 4:00 p.m. time slot for
tennis, there were many other broadcasting pitfalls. On more than 50% of
the changeovers the commercials exceeded the 90 second changeover time
allotted to the players. By the time the network picked up the post-
commercial game, Chang or Mancini had played at least one or two points.
As a tennis fan, not watching a match that does not have complete cover-
age because of the extra commercials is extremely irritating. If ABC
were covering a College Basketball game they wouldn't dare miss a moment
of the action.

Also, unlike the tennis coverage on ESPN (Indian Wells Men's Final) two
weeks earlier, ABC failed to stay with the post-match awards ceremony.
The post-match speeches are often entertaining to the fan as you can often
pick up what the players are thinking or feeling about their triumph or
defeat. Maybe ABC can learn from the quality tennis coverage ESPN con-
sistantly delivers, including their choice of tennis analysis!

(Name withheld article reprinted without permission.)

I don't agree that ESPN is so perfect in its coverage, but it is better than
any of the major networks. We have legitimate complaints on how tennis is
treated by the networks and the sponsers. We should address these enmass
to either the networks themselves or to the mens and womens tennis assoc-
iations. If this tactic should fail, then threatening to not purchase products
advertised on these shows, may do the trick.

I was going to write a sample letter as a guide, but these two will surfice.
You know what your individual gripes are and since I had a low response to
my original post, it is best you write your own letter, if you so wish to.
Mine are already mailed.

Common Gripes are:

1. Matches shown late at night, instead of during a reasonal hour in the day;
2. Commercials running into the match points;
3. Truncated matches due to taping and "supposed" time constraints; (this
   never seems to happen to other sports)
4. Commentators talking during actual play; Ex. Bud Collins;
5. Too much coverage about nonsense going on around the event and not enough
   about the tennis actually being played; Ex. the U.S. Open., Wimbledon.,
   Olympics.
6. Not enough foreign tournaments covered, or, College tournaments.

For anyone who is serious in complaining about the T.V. coverage on both
the mens and womens tours, here are the names and addresses to write to:

Mens Tour:
~~~~~~~~~

Mark Miles, CEO
ATP Tour
4 Sawgrass Village
Suite 240
Ponte Verdra, Florida 32082

Womens Tour:
~~~~~~~~~~~

Gerard Smith, Executive Director & CEO
Womens Tennis Association
133 First Street N.E.
St Petersberg, Florida 33701

Howard
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Howard Zivotofsky       //===\   //===\  //===/        Co-creator R.S.T.
City University       //===/   //===\     //         busbh@cunyvm.bitnet
of  New  York       //   \\   \\===/    //         busbh@cunyvm.cuny.edu