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the Tennis Channel
Who said the sport was dead? Interest abounds.
By Carl Bialik
Conventional factoid wisdom reminds us that tennis was big in the 1970s and 1980s among Baby Boomers but then took a steep dive in popularity with the concurrent rise of doctor office visits from knee and back injuries. With the decline of tennis came the emergence of golf as the new hot sport for aging boomers.
So it would seem that when the launch of a cable channel devoted to tennis was announced some months back the media world might well have yawned.
It did not.
The Tennis Channel, now set to launch in July 2002, has generated huge amounts of attention. An early story in Media Life, for example, set off a string of email queries that continue to arrive, seemingly daily, asking for contact information for the channel.
"When they said they were going to do it, there was initially a lot of skepticism," says Jon Wertheim, tennis beat writer for Sports Illustrated and author of "Venus Envy," about the women’s tour. "But they’ve impressed a lot of people."
By "they" Wertheim means the network's co-founders, CEO and chairman David Meister and president Steve Bellamy. Meister previously ran HBO Sports and launched Cinemax. Bellamy is a celebrity tennis coach. Their advisory board includes tennis great Billie Jean King, top managers at Wilson and Prince, and the heads of two major tournaments.
But perhaps it is their investors who inspire the most confidence.
The lead investor is Frank Biondi, former head of Viacom and Universal Studios. Another investor, the sports management and player agent firm IMG, is a powerful force in the sports world and controls a number of tennis tournaments.
Tennis Channel executive vice president Bruce Rider will not say how much has been invested, but a press report in late August pegged the number at between $30 and $100 million.
"We think we have a sport very much on the rise," says Rider. Tennis’s TV ratings have risen substantially over the last three years, for both men’s and women’s events, according to Rider.
Ninety-two million Americans watched a portion of this year’s U.S. Open.
Much of the optimism about this channel’s prospects stems from the success of another all-sports, all-the-time niche network: The Golf Channel, launched seven years ago.
But whether the parallels are there is less certain.
Bob Greenway, senior vice president of The Golf Channel, argues that one successful niche channel does not automatically beget success for other niche channels, similar as they might seem.
"I don’t know whether a new niche channel can come into today’s environment and get enough distribution, enough critical mass and enough advertising revenue to be successful," he told a reporter in August.
Rider is unfazed. The Tennis Channel has not yet signed any deals with cable carriers, but, according to Rider, the channel has gotten "an extremely positive reception from the cable community."
Interest among hard-core tennis fans is also high, says Rider, judging by phone calls to its Santa Monica offices and hits to its web site.
"Every week people want to know what the deal is with the channel," Wertheim says of his weekly mail from readers.
Tennis fans’ interest in seeing the new channel succeed may stem in part from an age-old rivalry with golf fans.
"Tennis fans are asking, ‘If golf fans can sustain a channel devoted to golf, why can’t we sustain a channel devoted to tennis, especially since tennis gets treated so shabbily by the networks?’" says SI's Wertheim.
He is referring, in particular, to NBC’s decision to show this year’s French Open women’s final on tape delay, and CBS’s "horrific" coverage of the Venus Williams-Jennifer Capriati final at the Ericsson Open, which was "as good a match as you were going to have at the time," Wertheim says.
The Tennis Channel has already signed deals with four men’s, three women’s, and four senior men’s events (the network will also air some squash, badminton, table tennis and paddle tennis).
While Rider would not criticize other networks’ tennis coverage, he says his channel’s match broadcasts will have their own look and feel.
The channel will chiefly have the rights to early-round play, which is full of both middling journeymen and young up-and-comers. Wertheim thinks the channel’s coverage should focus on the latter.
"They can sell it as a ‘You can catch the rising star’ sort of thing," Wertheim says.
Still, as fed up as some tennis fans may be with network coverage and as hungry as some are for more live tennis, such die-hards are "extremely finite," says Wertheim.
"That’s why you need instruction and puffery pieces, too."
The channel’s planners recognize this need, so approximately 40 percent of the airtime will be devoted to matches, 40 percent to instruction, and 20 percent to features and news on the players.
Among the instructors slated to teach racquet skills on air are coaches Paul Annacone, Brad Gilbert and Nick Bollettieri.
Feature shows will play up the cheesecake factor, appropriate for a sport which boasts Anna Kournikova. She is the world’s most marketable female athlete, and she has never won the single’s draw of a tournament.
The daily news show will "capitalize on the drawing power and sex appeal of this new wave of tennis stars," according to a company press release. Another show will follow players off the court to places including "the hottest night spots around the world."
"They’re young, fun and glamorous," Rider says of the young racquet stars. "There’s a lot to be enjoyed about what they’re up to."
These feature pieces will play a major role in boosting non-hard-core fans’ interest in the game.
"It will do wonders to bring tennis to a broader audience," Rider predicts.
Will Wertheim--tennis writer and tennis fan, who reels off the names of players like Guillermo Coria and Tommy Robredo with aplomb--watch The Tennis Channel? "I can’t say I’ll be glued to every second-round match," he says. "But I’ll program it into my remote."
November 28, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Carl Bialik is a New York writer and a regular contributor to Media Life.
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