Get Set For Action
Illawarra Mercury
Friday December 30, 2005
Summer is the perfect time to enjoy all sorts of sporting activities - on the small screen of course. PAUL SUTTOR looks at what the networks have on offer for the professional couch potato this season.
The sun's out, the temperature is soaring and summer is in full swing, so there is of course only one place to be - on the couch watching sport.Although the next month might mean days spent enjoying the great outdoors for many Australians, for the professional couch potato the lounge room is their summer paradise.There's cricket, cricket and more cricket. If the gentlemen's game is not your cup of tea, there's tennis, tennis and even more tennis.For those picky types still not satisfied, there's the Australian basketball and football competitions which are hotting up as they reach their respective finals.Crunch time for the swimmers trying to qualify for the Commonwealth Games is not far away either. Surf life saving will even make a rare television appearance.Cast your remote control's infra-red reach beyond our shores and there's even more cricket, football and basketball, as well as the start of another busy year of golf.What more could a sports lover want?For summer is synonymous with sport, and the good thing for couch potatoes is that TV executives know this.The Nine network has spent untold millions over the years securing the cricket rights.Earlier this year, the network signed a seven-year contract extension with Cricket Australia which is estimated to increase the cost of the broadcasting rights from $25 million to $40 million per year.That's a lot of cash just for the right to show 11 players try to bash a small red leather object with a piece of willow better than another mob.No wonder former English cricketer and now commentator Tony Greig tries to push all those "limited edition" items of sports memorabilia at every given opportunity during the cricket telecasts.The benefit for the armchair spectator is that cricket coverage has improved significantly over the years.When the Nine network took over after cricket's rebel split in the late 1970s, viewers were used to seeing just one view of the action from a cameraman stationed at one end of the ground. That meant that if the striker was batting at the camera's end, viewers were treated to the batsman's rear end.Nowadays the cricket connoisseur has a multitude of camera angles around the ground, as well as stump-cams and microphones, 'super slow-mo' cameras, the hi-tech HawkEye system for tracking lbw decisions and the 'snickometer' for contentious catching decisions.There's also more thorough statistics, better graphs and analysis through the vast range of technology in the Nine network bunker.However, despite what the Prime Minister may believe, there actually is more to summer than cricket.January is the golden time of year for Australia's tennis fans.For the other 11 months you need to have Pay TV and an owl's nocturnal capacity to watch the world's best strut their stuff.But for the first month of the year, the likes of Roger Federer, Serena and Venus Williams, Lleyton Hewitt, Rafael Nadal and Maria Sharapova will be Down Under strutting their stuff in primetime.The 2005 Australian Open men's final between Hewitt and Russian giant Marat Safin was the nation's highest rating TV program this year.Hewitt's four-set loss attracted a greater audience than both football grand finals and the Melbourne Cup.If anyone had any doubt about Australia's sporting passion - sports telecasts made up nine of the top 10 programs.Just like cricket's coverage, tennis has undergone a technology revolution in recent years.The Seven network, which pays a relatively cheap $5 million annually for Australia's tennis rights, has also bombarded its viewers with new camera angles and state-of-the-art technology to confirm line calls.The biggest advance Seven has made with its coverage has been the use of guest commentators such as tennis greats John McEnroe, Jim Courier and Martina Hingis over the past few summers.Australia's top female player Alicia Molik will be calling the shots from the commentary box for Seven at this year's event while she takes time off to get over an inner ear virus.But the sporting bounty is not just limited to tennis and cricket. Australia's revamped competition containing the football artists formerly known as soccer players (A-League) has just six rounds remaining before the finals.The National Basketball League is also reaching the business end of the season - the Hawks have nine matches remaining but the unfortunate scenario facing Wollongong fans is that none of their games will be televised by Fox Sports.While it's a far cry from surf life saving's glory days of the 1980s and early 90s, the Seven network will televise the final of the Nutri-Grain series on January 29, giving it some much-needed exposure.For the serious sports tragic, there's much more on offer on the many Pay TV screens, including the English Premier League, overseas cricket contests, the neverending National Basketball Association season and the United States Professional Golfers Association (PGA) tour.In between, the subscription service providers still manage to cram in horseracing, athletics, boxing, repeats of the AFL season and more obscure pursuits such as snooker, fishing, darts, powerboat racing and the least energetic "sport" of all - poker.Funnily enough, there are some medical types out there who say sitting on the lounge watching sport for hours on end could be hazardous to your health.To appease those wowsers, it is recommended that you should place your beer fridge at least 10-15m from your sofa to provide sufficient exercise.Also, it is advisable to switch hands at regular intervals to prevent RSI (Remote-control Strain Injury).Enjoy summer while it lasts because before you know it, winter will be here.Then it'll be time to watch rugby league, AFL, union, Wimbledon, the Formula One circuit, baseball ...
© 2005 Illawarra Mercury