The Sport Thread

He should be second on Court, on Friday, not as a result of BBC pressure but because of his draw position.

So primetime is unlikely again - he' should start around 3-4pm. The BBC's only hope of primetime really is for some significant rain delays.

Any confirmation on what they're doing on Saturday yet? The provisional alternative schedules show Wimbledon on BBC1 till 2.30pm then moving to BBC2 - just half an hour into the ladies final (less than that once the pre-amble is done with!). Would be much better to have the final on BBC2 from the start surely.

I was at work this evening and therefore didn't see what happened with the Murray match but, hearing about it now, I'm absolutely baffled. I really cannot see how this scheduling would have benefited anyone. The BBC were probably more likely to lose viewers than gain them, because of all the channel changing.

I absolutely agree that it would have been acceptable to move the match back to BBC One at 7pm, but the decision they took this evening was totally unacceptable considering the impact it had on other programming and those recording the match.

It would have been even very slightly excusable if BBC Two had stayed with Wimbledon to show other live action, but to switch the whole coverage to BBC One for the sake of 20 minutes really beggars belief.

I wonder when exactly the decision was taken to shorten the news? What would have happened if the match had have ended at, say, 6.35pm, or if there was an unexpected rain delay? Would the regional news have had to fill for an extra ten minutes? So many risks for so little reward.

Hopefully they will see sense and make a wiser decision on Friday - even if it means delaying the news until after the Murray match is completed.

Re Saturday and the scheduling for the Ladies' Final, IMO it would make sense to start the Wimbledon coverage at 1.00pm on BBC One (as scheduled) and give it a decent build-up, then switch to BBC Two at around 1.45pm so as to avoid interrupting the final itself. The World Cup coverage could start early on BBC One to fill the gap. But after this evening's debacle, goodness knows what they have planned.

There's a roof on centre court so any rain delays would be 30 mins max while they close the roof.

It should be similar to today, depending of course on how long the match before it takes. Murray has been second on court at this stage before and it gone on into the late evening because of earlier matches going into the fifth set. Had Federer's match done that today, Murray might not have started until about 6.

Expect Murray v Nadal to be much longer than his match today too.

While in the mean time the showers have stopped and others courts resumed play.

Forgot about the roof - does make primetime even less likely. How I'm sure the BBC would like them to have an evening session starting at 7pm.


In other news the BBC will be showing one match a day from the World Tour Finals for the next two-years, including one semi-final and the final. Last year they just showed the opening Murray match on the Sunday then I think one semi-final and the final. I assume Sky Sports will show the rest.

I'm not sure the BBC would be that keen to have an evening session at 7pm - especially if it didn't involve Murray. It would have a massive impact on the prime time schedules, with the possibility of going beyond 10pm every night.

Good news about the World Tour Finals though . . . presumably the BBC matches will be the afternoon matches? It does boost a continually dwindling tennis portfolio, especially now they don't seem that interested in the Davis Cup (next weekend's GB v Turkey match at Eastbourne is exclusively live on British Eurosport).

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Heads up on Friday's men's singles semi-finals order of play: Berdych v Djokovic first up followed by Murray v Nadal

BBC's channel hopping last night caused problems for it's online simulcasts, which couldn't keep up and showed tennis viewers the BBC2 shows instead.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/news/a236452/bbcs-online-murray-coverage-interrupted.html


Of course though the BBC put it down to a "minor technical fault" rather than apologising for switching it back and forth in the first place. Didn't benefit anyone at all - the 20 minute slot on BBC1 got 5m viewers (the regional news often gets over 6m in the slot), and it didn't encourage anyone to stick with the tennis who might not have otherwise. The BBC2 coverage from 5.50-6.40pm got 1.7m, then just 1.2m from 7-8pm.

Let's see how they screw It up tomorrow then. IMO if they want it on BBC1 they should stick with it throughout, moving the national news to BBC2 and delaying the regional news till the conclusion.


BTW, did the regional late-bulletin get extended at all to compensate?

Remember that the BBC deliberately didn't show the 3pm World Cup quarter-final tomorrow because they didn't want a clash with Murray. There is some method in the madness!

I said earlier in the thread that we would have to have a year of complaints before we got a year of common sense and maybe this could be the complaints year. However, it is annoying that people seem to be complaining about the tennis not being available online which the BBC can call a 'minor technical fault' (which to be fair, it was) when people should really be complaining about the pointless switching channels and shortened news programmes.

If the online tennis feed was actually the feed of BBC Two then people watching online would have heard the CA mention that the coverage continued on BBC One - twice and although it was probably annoying, there was no reason to miss [very much] of the tennis.

The late regional news didn't get extended, AFAIK.

It looks as though sense has prevailed today as far as planning is concerned, and local news may simply follow after the tennis has finished on BBC One (assuming a long match):