[BodegaBay]

for those of you who's lucky enough to have ESPN HD...

ESPN, Wimbledon Agree on 4-year Deal


Apr 14, 11:05 AM (ET)


BRISTOL, Conn. (AP) - ESPN reached a four-year agreement to televise Wimbledon from 2003-06.

ESPN and ESPN2 will broadcast nearly 120 hours of programming from the All England Club starting June 23, the network said Monday.


Coverage will feature one men's and one women's semifinal. NBC will show the finals, in addition to other coverage.


The addition of Wimbledon means ESPN airs three of the four Grand Slam events.


think they'll have the cameras rigged up at the all england club in time for late june? just think, the championships in HD!

 

[Ken H]

Quote:

Originally posted by bodegabay think they'll have the cameras rigged up at the all england club in time for late june?

Nope. They would need an HD mobile production unit, which in Europe does not exist.

 

[jason7878]

read real carefully as it says that NBC will be doing the championship games. Meaning unless NBC gets the HD stuff in England this will definitly not be in HD

 

[Marty1781]

Just my opinion but I am just so frustrated that coverage of Wimbledon is getting progresively worse and worse. When HBO did it, they were great, no commercials, late night rebroadcasts of the entire day coverage, etc. Although TNT had commercials, they still had a good amount of coverage. ESPN, without getting into details, IMO, by far has the crappiest tennis coverage of any network. I am a professional tennis statistician and they are by far my least favorite network to work with. Oh well..

 

[Dan Burgess]

I didn't have HBO when they covered Wimbledon, but I'm thinking it was probably pretty sweet with no commercials, and likely some serious coverage of all kinds of matches.


I, too, fear that ESPN's production and coverage will not be very comprehensive, and will probably have an overdose of commercials and switching around from match to match every ten minutes.


Maybe someday The Tennis Channel will carry the majors and do them justice...

 

[Marty1781]

Ya, HBO's coverage was definitely comprehensive. A shame they do not cover it anymore. I just hope ESPN never gets their hands on the US Open though. USA Network airs massive amounts of tennis during the first week and then when CBS overlaps and eventually takes over in the second week with their HD coverage, well its like Christmas for two weeks

 

[beachrez]

Do they have the capability to do any televising of sports events in widescreen in England/Europe yet? That would be a decent compromise.

 

[DougMan]

hi,


its in Europe, so a european Network will produce the Coverage, so no HD Pictures.



- DougMan

 

[Ken H]

Quote:

Originally posted by beachrez Do they have the capability to do any televising of sports events in widescreen in England/Europe yet?

Yes, they have a lot of 16:9 480i, it looks like Fox Widescreen, no biggie.

 

[BodegaBay]

Quote:

Originally posted by jason7878 read real carefully as it says that NBC will be doing the championship games. Meaning unless NBC gets the HD stuff in England this will definitly not be in HD

jason,


what i meant was "The Championships"

the English refers to Wimbledon as "The Championships" and it lasts a "fortnight," which is 2 weeks

 

[dgreen]

I had wondered this since USA Network announced they would carry their Masters coverage in HD. Was this a prelude to their fall US Open coverage in HD? 2 weeks of HD tennis--now that is Christmas!

 

[Art Lloyd]

Marty, while I agree 100% with your sentiments and wish it were different, the progressivley worse coverage of Wimbledon sort of follows the fall in the American public's interest in the sport. These are not the heady days of the universal appeal of men's tennis. The women's game has more of a following than does the men's. It is not tennis' brightest hour here in the Unitied States. Art

 

[Ken H]

Quote:

Originally posted by dgreen I had wondered this since USA Network announced they would carry their Masters coverage in HD. Was this a prelude to their fall US Open coverage in HD?

No.

 

[tmitchmd]

I remember reading that there is actually an HD capable truck in England. Will ESPN use it for Wimbledon or any other event? Time will tell.


I do think it is entirely possible now that CBS is combining SD/HD into one production using the same cameras that we could see (CBS produced) USA-HD US Open Tennis coverage like that of The Masters.

 

[kevin j]

i read today that espn'll be doing 120 hours of wimbledon coverage btw

 

[squawkBOX]

Wimbledon coverage has been in widescreen here in the UK since 2001.

http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/gallery/d...ve-dsat-01.jpg


From then it has also been interactive with being able to choose from five live matches full screen widescreen

http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/gallery/d...ve-dsat-03.jpg


Most sports now are widescreen in the UK.

 

[Fred M]

ESPN and Wimbledon
Sports Business News, April 16, 2003

Posted at: http://www.sportsbusinessnews.com/index.asp?story_id=25129


ESPN is the new cable home for the Wimbledon Championship tennis tournament through 2006.


The new four-year deal with The All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club, which has been in the works for months, was formally unveiled Monday.


The deal, said to be worth about $6 million annually, gives ESPN rights to 120 hours of coverage, including one women's and one men's semifinal game.

It also covers coverage for ESPN HD, video-on-demand content, ESPN's Spanish-language service, broadband and interactive components.

 

[DougMan]

Quote:

Originally posted by Fred M It also covers coverage for ESPN HD, video-on-demand content, ESPN's Spanish-language service, broadband and interactive components. [/b]

hi,


well yeah but i cant believe it, because not ESPN doing their own Pictures. The UK Network will do the Pictures, so how should the Pictures are in HiDef when the UK dont take Hidef able Cameras. What i can believe is that the "Game of the Day" will be produce in HiDef, but not the whole Event.

We will see.



- DougMan

 

[bfdtv]

sqauk,


Thanks for that correction. Interesting I was told differently before last year's Wimbledon, but I did a search, and behold, they have been doing it in widescreen for several years now. Will have to be more careful next time. BBC has been the leader in widescreen content for some time, so I am not surprised.

Quote:

Most sports now are widescreen in the UK.

Is that really true? I know BBC does widescreen, but haven't they lost their rights to most sporting events? I also know that at least one of the FOX Sports channels on Sky Digital does 16:9 regularly (sort of like FOX here in the U.S.), but I thought widescreen coverage was less frequent on their other sports channels? Being that you live in this market, could you perhaps post a list of UK channels that offer regular WS sports coverage?

 

[squawkBOX]

In the UK, we don't have as much channels as you guys in the US but we get widescreen on:


All BBC content.

All ITV sports (they even offer WS with feeds from Europe that are 4:3 but put pretty curtains at both sides)

Channel 5

Sky Sports 1,2,3 and Sky Sports Extra

Premiership Plus

attheraces

Setanta Sport 1 + 2 (although I am not 100% sure about this as its not available in Scotland - only the rest of the UK).



The UK market generally has a lot of sports in WS but I think the main use of WS is for other things. We get widescreen news, sport, children programming, dramas etc. We get WS versions of 24, CSI, and other US programming that is WS.


The channels that are WS in the UK are:

BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, ITV2, Channel 4, Channel 5, Sky One (soon), BBC Three, BBC Four, CBBC, Cbeebies, E4, Film 4, Sky Movies (12 channels to be WS soon), Sky Sports 1, 2, 3, Sky Sports Extra, attheraces BBC News 24, BBC Parliament, S4C, S4C~2, there is a ton of WS shopping channels, Sky Box Office (PPV) is all widescreen


The main broadcaster (Sky) recently said that they are changing all their movie channels to widescreen.




I also am sure that I read somewhere that the BBC have HDTV equipment to broadcast, as they have done some HDTV programming - but as we don't have it here in Europe we can see the output.