The Weekly Gripe – our supposed 7 day moan about anything – returns to discuss the Channel Nine Australian Open tennis coverage. Despite being a week late, it is still fresh enough, with a warning of the upcoming rugby league season starting.
Much to our surprise, there were people who were surprised that the Channel Nine Australian Open tennis coverage wouldn’t be awful.
Their cricket coverage was widely panned as the worst in Australian broadcasting by cricket fans. And indeed the overbearing arrogance and self-love saw the cricket commentary team win the 2016 Jerks of the Year.
Channel Nein’s rugby league coverage sets a new low in quality every year. And a similarly increasing level of scorn from league fans.
So across many sports with different audiences and different expectations, Channel Nein are still woeful.
It’s not us, it’s you. Trust us.
Was the Channel Nine Australian Open tennis coverage any worse than Channel Seven, after the big swap in the sporting shake up of 2018? Yes, in pure sports broadcasting it was. As for the dreadful cross promote of Channel Seven, Channel Nein wasn’t too bad.
So what were some of their crimes?
Well the first and worst was sending people dressed in wedding gowns to sit in the crowd, the sole purpose of which was to cross promoted their awful, awful show MAFS. Some on social media thought the Channel Nine Australian Open was going all pro same-sex marriage and having a social conscience.
With Channel Nein and their LCD you should have known better. It was all for their dreadful “social experiment” full of the worst people on earth.
Then there was the now infamous Tony Jones interview. He claims after the massive backlash that he was trying to be funny. Everyone else thought it rubbish and condescending. As per the Channel Nein sporting interview playbook..
Rule 2 (a) of Channel Nein Sports Broadcasting – People are stupid, they don’t want anything in depth from your interview, please tell the audience what we think they want to here rather than potentially giving the viewer what they want. Ensure that there is maximum fluff. Where possible try add humour to cover for actual decent content or a deficit in knowledge.. Be sure to shorten any player’s name over six letter, and lengthen anyone whose names in four letter or fewer. If at all possible, try and desperately get the star to cling to something Australian to justify our place in world sport.
They cut short a trophy presentation of Sam Stosur’s doubles win to bring you something else. Probably a slow motion montage, or another talking head talking crap.
They couldn’t be arsed showing Serena Williams at one stage, as there were more important games between some players most have never heard of.
And this one, and another one.
Possibly hand picking a few articles with the negativity is a little unfair, but there wasn’t anything to balance against, as very little was written about the good qualities of the Channel Nine Australian Open tennis coverage. That’s the thing with Channel Nein sport, people either suffer it, or suffer it and complain.
And sure, it is easy to grab a few twitter comments, and turn it into a whole article about everyone hating something – the backbone of most of the news.com.au website – but a smallish search will find the same themes of discontent.
At least the Channel Nine Australian Open tennis coverage was democratic, equally awful as their NRL coverage. But sadly the NRL goes for 30 weeks, not two.
Something to look forward to in just over a month’s time.
Or four months time if you are a Fox Sports snob.
