Cable saved television in so many ways.  In the old days of American television, when there was just network TV which comprised of four channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS), the channels had to serve several functions.  They had to have local news.  They had to have national news.  They had prime time television in the evenings, soap operas and interview shows in the afternoons, occasionally a small gap that local networks could put reruns of old shows between 4 and 6 PM, and sports on the weekend.

If a particularly important event occurred, these channels went into news mode.  Thus, when the Challenger space shuttle blew up, all other shows were pre-empted as they gave coverage hour after hour.  Had there been a sporting event, it would have been pre-empted in favor of news.  If the president gave a national speech, all channels felt obligated to cover it.  After all, they had to accord respect to the commander in chief.

Sports were often given the short shrift if it wasn’t one of the major sports like football, baseball, or basketball.  Tennis coverage was encouraged by Bud Collins who urged live coverage of tennis tournaments, even those in Europe.  In those days, NBC would never broadcast European tennis events outside the Slams.  And even then, they felt only a casual audience watched those events so why bother to cover it live?  And they didn’t want the matches to run long, so even if there was an exciting three set women’s final, NBC would fit it to an hour and a half, because seriously, who watches women’s tennis?

NBC (and CBS) also heavily favored American players which, fortunately for them, were always ranked high.  If there as John McEnroe playing some weak opponent or Becker playing Edberg, you know which one NBC would show.  They cared only to showcase Americans and weren’t particularly interested in those other “foreigners”.

Indeed, NBC preferred showing exhibitions as much as real events.  They felt the audience was a bit too dumb to distinguish between legitimate events and exhibitions.  Pros played a lot more exhibitions back then because it was less taxing, and they made money on it.  The other benefit was the exhibitions were held in the US.  Oh, and they would televise these often weeks afterwards.  These events were probably held over a week, but broadcast over a month, in an era of fake tennis coverage.

Sports channels like ESPN changed everything.  ESPN doesn’t have to break away from sports even under pretty serious national news (like 9/11).  They can discuss it, but sports is paramount.  This is what they do.  Presidential speech?  Ignored.  Weather issues?  Ignored.  They focus on sports, and they show it.

But even ESPN realizes its fans prefer watching football or basketball over tennis.  ESPN has done a tremendous job with tennis, especially the Slams.  Back in the day, it was USA and ESPN giving all day broadcasts of the US Open, and this expanded to the French Open (HBO had rights to Wimbledon for many years).   However, ESPN isn’t completely tennis-oriented so many tournaments are no longer covered.

Tennis Channel has taken time to grow, and it has leaned on a crew that covers all the Masters 1000 events (Robbie Koenig of South Africa, Jason Goodall of UK, and there’s an American).  By leaning on this group, they just have to rebroadcast the event, and not have their own commentators, which would be expensive.  Now, they do have their own commentators which leads to funny things like both ESPN and Tennis Channel doing commentary during the Slams.  They do this, presumably, to own the rights to the commentary though they share the broadcast feed.

While Tennis Channel serves as secondary partner to ESPN during Slams (ESPN gets the main rights, and Tennis Channel picks up when ESPN doesn’t do coverage and does reruns), they are on their own otherwise.

Over the years, Tennis Channel has done something that would leave NBC sports executives flabbergasted.  They try to cover as much tennis as possible.  OK, they don’t quite do this, but they do it enough.

This all came to a tumultuous crescendo on Saturday, January 7, 2012.  In the first week of January, there were three tournaments being held and one exhibition.   These events were Chennai (India), Doha (Qatar), Brisbane (Australia) and the Hopman Cup in Perth, Australia.  In this one day, they showed Hopman Cup live at the week hours of the morning with the Czech Republic winning over France.  They also showed singles in Chennai, Doha, and Brisbane.  There were four separate events, and Tennis Channel had coverage of all of them!

This is quite impressive considering how none of these events are particularly important except as they lead up to the Australian Open and that fitting all of this in one day meant they had to show matches in the wee hours where only the most fanatic of fans would care to watch.  Nevertheless, they seem to believe the mission of carrying as much tennis as possible is important regardless of who is watching.  Heck, a week after the US Open, Tennis Channel had a special where they showed a national tournament where the winner was given a wildcard into qualifiers for the US Open, and they even followed this guy as he played two rounds of qualifying before getting eliminated.  Again, only the most diehard of fans would care about someone not ranked in the top 100, let alone the top 10.

Oh sure, occasionally Tennis Channel missteps.  The price of rebroadcasting some old events must be so onerous that Tennis Channel is willing to find second rate broadcasts from 20 years ago instead of the original CBS or NBC broadcasts.  There are tons of older matches that would be great to each (Edberg’s run to the US Open in 91 and 92, especially, the 92 run is NEVER shown, nor are the epic Edberg-Becker Wimbledon finals).  Do we ever see Chang’s French Open final from 1989?  Admittedly, the resolution of those broadcasts were so horrible that it was nearly impossible to spot the ball.

Tennis Channel tends to relegate instructional tennis to the wee hours.  It might be nice to show something at, say, 11:30 PM on weeks where not much is happening.   Also, they sometimes aren’t up-to-date in their scores.  Switzerland played Australia in Davis Cup shortly after the US Open.  The match between Wawrinka and Hewitt spilled over into a second day.  However, 24 hours after the match concluded, Tennis Channel kept reporting that they would play the match soon.  The crawl at the bottom often has results 12 hours old or older when they should be no more than ten minutes out of date.

Their commentary crew, to my mind, is still not on par with ESPN’s group of Cahill, McEnroe, Gilbert, and Chris Fowler.  In particular, although Justin Gimelstob has gotten better, he’s still pretty annoying.

But when they get things right, as they did a few Saturdays ago, it really boggles the mind.