Although it won't feature any live match coverage, Tennis Channel, which signed its own 12-year extension with the All England Club, is
expanding and broadening its presentation of Wimbledon Primetime.
Anchored from a new state-of-the-art set, Wimbledon Primetime
will run all 14 nights of the tournament, up from 10 under the previous
contract, the network said.
And unlike the four-hour block of interviews and match coverage
of the past, this fortnight Tennis Channel will offer seven nightly
hours of original
Wimbledon programming.
The four-hour
Wimbledon Primetime’s
first edition
each night will include
three hours of
on-court stories and
encore match coverage,
followed by an
hour of fast-paced
highlights and interviews. A second edition will then feature three entirely
new hours of the day’s best tennis before the concluding, catch-up hour.
Tennis Channel — which also signed a multiyear contract renewal
with lead Grand Slam event sportscaster Bill Macatee — is coming
off a successful French Open this past month. French Open Tonight
enjoyed its largest tune-in ever, some 290,000 average viewers, a
24% increase over 2011, the network said.
Joining Macatee in Wimbledon Primetime coverage will be Martina
Navratilova, Lindsay Davenport, Justin Gimelstob and Mary Carillo,
making her first Big W appearance on behalf of Tennis. Bud Collins,
the doyen of the sport’s correspondents, was scheduled to contribute
also, but will miss Wimbledon for the first time in 44 years due
to an illness, according to his Facebook page.
