Thursday, April 3, 2008

FSN has got to go

Not only has my FSN regional network. FSN Southwest, opted to show too little of the Sony Ericsson Open, it isn't even showing what its website says it is supposed to be showing. Last night, there was tennis scheduled, but none was shown. Today, there was supposed to have been four hours of tennis, but women's gymnastics popped up instead. I had arranged my day so that I could be home to watch the women's semifinal. I used to think no network's schedule could be more unreliable than ESPN's, but FSN is much, much worse.

The FSN contract with the ATP and the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour is for one year, after which it is to be evaluated. It is clear that ESPN no longer wants Indian Wells and Miami for financial reasons, and negotiating them for Tennis Channel still means a lot of fans will not get to see them. But considering that a lot of tennis fans do have Tennis Channel, that option may be the best.

At any rate, it would be an outrage for FSN to get these tournaments again unless some type of agreement is made for all of the FSN outlets to show a substantial portion of tournament play. And that ATP Sony Ericsson Open contract that requires that most of the matches shown be men's matches is also very irritating, but that is another battle.

Update: FSN Southwest cut off the Roddick-Federer match after the seventh game of the third set. Just goodbye, and onto the fishing show.

2 comments:

BeefingFraeulein said...

Hi Diane,

I thought about you last week during FSN's coverage of Indian Wells. They seemed OBSESSED with showing the women in the stands between (and sadly, sometimes during) the points.

During one point while the camera was fixated on a women in a bikini top a hand reached in from off camera and (yes) squeezed a part of her breast. The producers quickly cut-away.

And will Gimelstob stop referring the the WTA women as "girls"!

Diane said...

I noticed that the camera was on a lot of women, but thankfully, I missed the breast grab shot.

Justin Gimelstob is hopeless.