I’ve been frustrated by the ESPN coverage so far. If I must point a finger to the cause of the declining popularity of ATP tennis in US, I’ll point to ESPN and their single-minded strategy of promoting only the American players in their coverage. 5 days past and we only got to see a point here and there of Guga, Federer, Safin, Ferrero, Grosjen … Instead, we have to watch the most boring match of Andre and Lee, Roddick sluggishly oust whoever (and I can’t even remember who he plays), and what more, Fish got humiliated by losing 11 games in a roll and lost the match. Those are hardly interesting tennis. And I HEARD Guga against Arazi, Hewitt beat Larrson, Scud oust Paradorn and Ferrero played the magician were incredible matches and hell, I’ll never know. I fairly enjoy last night’s match of Agassi against Escude, but other brilliant matches are not finding their way into my screen. But Hewitt bageled his opponents is fun to watch
. What a terrible choice of coverage :fiery: .
I think it’s a dangerous strategy to place all your eggs in one basket. I understand they want to focus on the American players and they believe that the American viewers only want to watch Americans. Fair enough. But god forbids if these young American players don’t live up to their expectation and those old guns have to retire. And viewers still have no clues how to pronounce those top European/South American/Asia players name, and less hope of recognizing their faces. And you think casual viewer is gonna tune in to watch tennis anymore? Even if Roddick and Blake make it to the top, it’s an awfully tall task for them to single-handedly carry the load of tennis interest in the States.
I mean, as famous as Safin in the tennis world and I believe he would easily top every other popularity poll out there. And why wouldn’t they try to make sure the viewers learn about these exciting non-American players. Try to make sure even the casual viewers will know who’s the top one out there. A safe investment strategy required diversification and you thought those businessmen should have thought of that.
I don’t know about what you think, but I think ESPN really sucks. And is that damn Tennis Channel going to be on air
?
I think it’s a dangerous strategy to place all your eggs in one basket. I understand they want to focus on the American players and they believe that the American viewers only want to watch Americans. Fair enough. But god forbids if these young American players don’t live up to their expectation and those old guns have to retire. And viewers still have no clues how to pronounce those top European/South American/Asia players name, and less hope of recognizing their faces. And you think casual viewer is gonna tune in to watch tennis anymore? Even if Roddick and Blake make it to the top, it’s an awfully tall task for them to single-handedly carry the load of tennis interest in the States.
I mean, as famous as Safin in the tennis world and I believe he would easily top every other popularity poll out there. And why wouldn’t they try to make sure the viewers learn about these exciting non-American players. Try to make sure even the casual viewers will know who’s the top one out there. A safe investment strategy required diversification and you thought those businessmen should have thought of that.
I don’t know about what you think, but I think ESPN really sucks. And is that damn Tennis Channel going to be on air