Free to Air Tennis Notes

The anti-siphoning legislation was created to ensure that all Australians had on-going access to iconic sports events, like Wimbledon. Ironically, this legislation ensured that nobody was able to watch the semi-finals or earlier rounds live. Only the two finals were live.

Note to Communications Minister:

If you give a company a monopoly you ought to impose some conditions on them. If Channel Nine want to screen matches later at night for commercial reasons, fine, but why can’t Foxtel also screen the event so that people at least have the option of live viewing?

Note to Channel Nine:

The ad break following the presentation to Venus Williams included two Harvey Norman ads and THREE instances of the Sir Walter lawn ad. A break during the men’s final featured two different executions of the Nurofen ad, one after the other.

Note to the advertising industry:

Subscription Television has for the first time reached the situation where total viewers between 6AM and midnight exceed total viewers of any individual Free to Air network. Some of this success is due to diversity of programming. Diversity in ad breaks might also be part of the story.