TENNIS CHANNEL HEADS DOWN UNDER FOR NINTH YEAR OF AUSTRALIAN OPEN TELECAST
Nearly 30 Live, 200 Total Hours of Coverage as Courier, Navratilova, Davenport, Macatee, Gimelstob, Annacone, Haber and Wertheim Break Down the Grand Slam Action in Melbourne
Network Debuts Racquet Bracket: Australian Open Leading up to Tournament
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 11, 2016 – For the ninth straight year Tennis Channel will be at the Australian Open in Melbourne, providing viewers with multiple live and encore matches, highlights, and studio analysis, during the two-week tournament from Jan. 17-31. The channel will have 11 consecutive days and close to 30 hours of live coverage at this year’s Australian Open. Between encore replays, highlights, Australian Open Today and Tennis Channel Live at the Australian Open, the network will devote nearly 200 hours over two weeks to the season’s opening major.
Tennis Channel kicks off its live Australian Open match coverage Monday, Jan. 18, at 7 p.m. ET, the first of 10 consecutive days of primetime match play beginning at that time (complete schedule follows). The channel will not only air matches from the first-through-quarterfinal-round singles coverage, it will carry the women’s and mixed doubles finals live, as well as multiple encore presentations of the men’s doubles final. Tennis Channel will also bring fans same-day encore coverage of the men’s and women’s singles semifinals and finals. Since its first year of Australian Open coverage in 2008, each year the channel has aired all five tournament finals: men’s and women’s singles and doubles, and mixed doubles.
The network will broadcast daylong blocks of encore-matches and highlights via Australian Open Today, returning for the 2016 tournament. Beginning Monday, Jan. 18, from 7 a.m.-12:30 p.m., followed by an encore presentation from 12:30 p.m.-6 p.m., the show will run for 10 straight days, with various start times throughout the following week-and-a-half (complete schedule follows). The network will broadcast more than 80 hours of Australian Open Today in 2016.
Nightly lead-in-in show Tennis Channel Live at the Australian Open will premiere Sunday, Jan. 17, at 6 p.m. ET, on the eve of the opening day of the tournament. Every night (in the United States – morning in Australia) the show will offer viewers a recap of the previous day’s action and a preview of what they can expect in the coming day’s matches. During the tournament,
Emmy Award winner and host Brett Haber (@BrettHaber), Hall of Famers Jim Courier and Martina Navratilova, (@Martina) and Sports Illustrated’s Jon Wertheim (@jon_wertheim) will speak with guests, dissect all the play and story lines of the event, and provide special reports and stories from Melbourne. The show is set to air nightly 6 p.m.-7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 17-Wednesday Jan. 27, with the final show at 10 p.m.-11 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 28.
Leading up to the tournament, Tennis Channel will debut Racquet Bracket: Australian Open on Friday, Jan. 15, from 5 p.m.-6 p.m., with additional airings of the program to follow over the course of the next two days prior to the start of the tournament. Racquet Bracket: Australian Open offers Tennis Channel’s expert insights and opinion on the major, what they expect to see over the next two weeks and some potential challenges players will face.
Tennis Channel and ESPN continue their Grand Slam alliance with this year’s Australian Open and give fans nearly 24-hour coverage from Melbourne. Each network utilizes its own commentators and cross-promotes their television offerings.
Australian Open On-Air Talent
Navratilova has been covering the Australian Open for Tennis Channel since the network’s first year of tournament coverage in 2008. Considered one of the greatest athletes of all time, she won 12 Australian Open singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles as part of her 59 major championships. She will be joined by Hall of Fame members and current analysts Courier and Lindsay Davenport (@LDavenport76), both Australian Open singles champions as well: Courier won back-to-back titles in 1992-1993 and Davenport secured her title in 2000. Courier will appear daily on Tennis Channel Live at the Australian Open, while Davenport will add commentary throughout the network’s two-week coverage.
Justin Gimelstob (@justingimelstob) will join Tennis Channel for his ninth straight year of analysis at the Australian Open. One of the most astute analysts in televised tennis today, he also made his mark at the Australian Open with a mixed-doubles championship with partner Venus Williams in 1998 and remains active in the sport as an ATP board representative.
Famed coach Paul Annacone (@paul_annacone) will also be a part of the coverage and is known for coaching two of the greatest players of all-time in Pete Sampras, Roger Federer and most recently providing guidance to American star Sloane Stephens.
In all, former players on Tennis Channel’s Melbourne team have an impressive collective résumé with 16 Australian Open championships and 71 major titles.
Announcer Bill Macatee (@BMacatee), one of the most respected broadcasters in sports today, will lead the network’s coverage in Melbourne again in 2016. With Navratilova and Gimelstob, he has been part of every Tennis Channel telecast of the Australian Open and the sport’s three other majors. Haber, will not only host Tennis Channel Live at the Australian Open, but will also handle play-by-play throughout the tournament. Sports Illustrated reporter and author Wertheim returns as a part Tennis Channel’s Australian Open for his fourth consecutive year, and continues to be one of the most read, most trusted tennis writers in America today. His columns are among the best in the business and are required reading for tennis fans (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/writers/jon_wertheim/archive/) and his special features, news updates and round-table commentary have become staples of Tennis Channel’s coverage of the four majors.
Digital Coverage
Returning for the 2016 Australian Open, Tennis Channel’s digital subscription service, Tennis Channel Plus will offer expanded tournament coverage live from Melbourne, with approximately 90 hours of live digital coverage. Fans will be able to catch even more action from Down Under than the network is able to provide on its air. Available on the Tennis Channel Everywhere app to all Apple and Android users, regardless of whether or not they subscribe to Tennis Channel, the service will offer daylong coverage of a single court during the first eight days of the tournament. It will also supplement the network’s televised Australian Open coverage this year with daily highlights, interviews and other segments from Australian Open Today.
Outside Tennis Channel Plus, most viewers who get Tennis Channel are able to take the Australian Open on-the-go with them live on their mobile devices through the Tennis Channel Everywhere app at no additional cost. Simple subscription authentication with select distribution partners enables the app’s TV Everywhere function, and allows fans to tune into the network’s round-the-clock coverage from Melbourne throughout the workday back in the United States.
Tennis Channel’s website, www.tennischannel.com, will continue to offer its usual Down Under slate of Australian Open Today segments,video highlights, interviews, real-time scoring, an interactive draw and the network’s Racquet Bracket tournament prediction game. Visitors can enter the channel’s 2017 Australian Open sweepstakes, or browse special Australian Open columns from reporters Steve Flink and Joel Drucker (@joeldrucker). The channel’s social media activities on Facebook (www.facebook.com/tennischannel), Twitter (www.twitter.com/tennischannel), YouTube (www.youtube.com/tennischannel), Instagram (http://instagram.com/tennischannel) and Pinterest (www.pinterest.com/tennischannel) will also be devoted to the first tennis major of 2016 for much of this month.
Tennis Channel’s Live 2016 Australian Open Match Schedule
(Men’s/Women’s Singles Unless Otherwise Specified)
Date Time (ET) Event
Monday, Jan. 18 7 p.m.-9 p.m. First-Round Action
Tuesday, Jan. 19 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Second-Round Action
Wednesday, Jan. 20 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Second-Round Action
Thursday, Jan. 21 7 p.m.-11 p.m. Third-Round Action
Friday, Jan. 22 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Third-Round Action
Saturday, Jan. 23 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Round-of-16 Action
Sunday, Jan. 24 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Round-of-16 Action
Monday, Jan. 25 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Quarterfinals
Tuesday, Jan. 26 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Quarterfinals
Wednesday, Jan. 27 7 p.m.-9:30 p.m. TBA
Thursday, Jan. 28 11 p.m.-3:30 a.m. Mixed-Doubles Semifinal and
Women’s Doubles Final
Sunday, Jan. 31 12 a.m.-2a.m. Mixed-Doubles Final
This year, Australian Open encore match coverage on Tennis Channel will include same-day replays of the men’s and women’s singles third-round, semifinals and finals as well as the men’s and women’s doubles finals, as follows (ET):
Saturday, Jan. 23 – 7 a.m.-9 a.m.: men’s and women’s third round singles
Sunday, Jan. 24 – 7 a.m.-9 a.m.: men’s and women’s round-of-16 singles
Thursday, Jan. 28 – 6 a.m.-2 p.m.: men’s and women’s semifinals;
6 p.m.-10 p.m.: men and women’s semifinals
Friday, Jan. 29 – 6 a.m.-2 p.m.: men’s and women’s semifinals;
6 p.m.- 3 a.m.: men’s semifinal and women’s doubles final
Saturday, Jan. 30 – 5:30 a.m.-8 a.m.: men’s doubles final;
11 a.m.-8 p.m.: men’s doubles final and men’s semifinal
8 p.m.-12 a.m.: women’s final and men’s doubles final
Sunday, Jan. 31 – 6:30 a.m.-9 a.m.: women’s final;
2 p.m.-8 p.m.: women’s final and men’s semifinals
8 p.m.-12 a.m.: men’s final
Tennis Channel’s Australian Open Today Schedule (all times ET)
Tennis Channels’ Australian Open Today includes encore match coverage, highlights, interviews and a general review of the activity that took place during the tournament while most of America was sleeping the night before. The show will run daily from Monday, Jan. 18, through Wednesday, Jan. 27 – 10 days in all – before the network replaces it with encore semifinal and final coverage as the tournament winds down.
On the opening Monday of the tournament, Australian Open Today will air from 7 a.m.-12:30 p.m., and be immediately followed by an encore replay from 12:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. The following four days, Tuesday, Jan. 19, through Friday, Jan. 22, the show will broadcast from 7 a.m.-3 p.m. On Saturday, Jan. 23, it will be on Tennis Channel from 12 p.m.-6 p.m.
During the second week of the Australian Open, Australian Open Today runs from 1p.m.-6p.m. Sunday, Jan. 24 and 6:30 a.m.-3 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 25. The next two days, Tuesday, Jan. 26 and Wednesday, Jan. 27, the show will broadcast from 6 a.m.-3 p.m.
Tennis Channel (www.tennischannel.com) is the only 24-hour, television-based multimedia destination dedicated to both the professional sport and tennis lifestyle. A hybrid of comprehensive sports, health, fitness, pop culture, entertainment, lifestyle and travel programming, the network is home to every aspect of the wide-ranging, worldwide tennis community. It also has the most concentrated single-sport coverage in television, with telecast rights at the US Open, Wimbledon, Roland Garros (French Open), Australian Open, top-tier WTA competitions, Davis Cup, Fed Cup and Hopman Cup. Tennis Channel is carried by nine of the top 10 video providers.
