Netball fans fuming at TEN delays
More angry sports fans -this time whacking TEN for scheduling an Australian Diamonds more than 24 hours after it has been played.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
Sports viewers are once again fuming at a broadcaster for delays to important matches, but this time it’s not tennis, NRL, AFL or even V8s -it’s netball fans angry with Network TEN.
Last night the Australian Diamonds played New Zealand’s Silver Ferns in a last hitout before July’s World Championships.
But in a gross misjudgment by TEN it won’t be screened until midnight / 12am Tuesday on TEN -more than 24 hours after it has finished.
Irate fans have taken to TEN’s Facebook page to vent their fury.
Michaley Phokos: Channel ten what a disgrace! We have the 2 best netball teams in the world playing and you can not find time between the re runs and fishing shows to show a test match! These women are not only great athletes but great role models for all children and potential athletes! What is even worse is if it was a male sports test match it would be shown no questions ask! The amount of criticism should really show how much following netball has across the board! This is really disappointing…you can’t give ur support to out female athletes! Channel ten…not good enough!!!
Graham Watt: Pathetic Channel Ten, not only have you failed to show a test match live, you can’t even manage to show it within 24 hours of it being played. You then have the hide to schedule it the next day at midnight when the core audience would be asleep, you will probably then tell us it rated badly. I hope the coverage of the World Championships will be better.
Hetty Spagetti Toze: Channel Ten. Right now anyone can watch this netball tonight at 630 pm on Bigpond. Just remember your failure to meet the needs of Netball fans tonight, and with the coming of the National Broadband Network it is the way of the future. Instead of building a loyal customer base, you have disenfranchised them. NBN is coming, and with it the demise of your business. Good luck gents!
Patricia McFadzean: Not happy channel 10.. How many people do you think watch netball? 1000’s. you better get it right for the World cup coverage.
Natalee Withers: you should be ashamed Channel 10 not showing the netball internationals live!! The most popular sport for females in Australia and you cannot back your own country and show the netball tests live or at least at a reasonable hour! and what are you doing about world championships??? GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER !! Foxtel had much better netball coverage!!!
Justine Stephens: How good is the Australian Netball Coverage!!! Pretty bloody CRAP!!! Australia has one of the best netball teams in the world and you show your support by showing a test match a whole day and a half later and at a time when no ones awake to watch it!! Great support Channel Ten. So I guess showing any of the World Champs is out of the question then! Try showing your support for Australian Sports Women, they’re part of this country too ya know!!!!!
Cathryn Williams: You should give the rights to the telecast to a station that will actually show it!!! What’s the use of having extra channels if you are going to show the same thing on both!!! I guess this is the sort of treatment we’ll get for the World Championships….I will have to go and ‘dislike’ later now I’ve had my say. Time to put my digital radio onto Grandstand Extra. Thank goodness for the ABC!!!!!
Michael Tran: It seems that your whole wall is full of hate mail. Serves you right. And why arent you replying to our questions? Shame on you! Australian Netball Fans are not happy. It seems that your ratings will drop soon. Its something called karma. Think about the students who have school (like me) who have to wake up so early just to watch it and missing out valuble time of sleep which is needed for teens.
Wendy Anne Vernon: Netball is the most popular female sport played in Australia week in and week out by all ages, at various skill levels. Australian women play netball more than any other sport genre. So, why is it that yourselves and ALL T.V. channels throughout Australia continue to snub this mighty game? Are you sexist?? Are you stupid??
Janita Ferris: Channel ten you are very quiet about something that many others are very upset about, the Netball coverage. I think maybe you misjudged your public. It is extremely disappointing as a netball supporter to be treated this way. Maybe you should rethink your scheduling of the netball in future or pass it onto someone who will give it the priority it deserves.
36 Responses
Heaps of people play netball, but how many actually watch it? I know I never really watch it, even back when i played. Occasionally I would watch a little if I came across it when channel flicking but that is it. My reasoning is why watch it when you can actually do it, I see no point in watching sports on tv. Maybe most netball players feel the same and this is why it rates badly.
@ Secret Squirrel – How about also the fact that its the highest female participation sport in the country?
Or the fact it was between the two top netballing nations?
Unfortunately basketball has never been able to see the peak that it had during the 90s, and although soccer is on the rise in this country, doubtful that W-League would pull any form of audience on a commercial network
@Matt: you are very much badly mistaken
Take a look at ONE HD’s ratings and you find the following are the popular sporting events:
F1
MotoGP
AFL
In that order. The only reason AFL is low is because it shares an audience with TEN, but if it was exclusive to ONE, the order would be AFL, F1, MotoGP
@ Geoff – if the men’s basketball team was rated the best in the world you can bet they’d be on live. I think that’s more the point.
Yes Amanda, your netball-playing friends are a completely accurate representation of the overall population. I recommend reading up on sampling bias.
Kerry, your passion is great but not shared by the majority of Australians. Whatever arguments you can put forward for having more TV coverage of netball can also be made about many other second and third tier sports.
Frankly I’d rather see more prominence given to the W-League since that is a sport that is actually played in most countries of the world, unlike netball which is restricted to primarily Commonwealth states.
What’s Netball?
It is disgusting how channel 10 cannot show international netball games live. When the netball association changed from channel 2 to channel 10 I thought it was a great idea as channel 2 was absolutely disgusting with their coverage, we would get games stopped if there was overtime in an international game so they could go back to their normal programming, and we would not get the end of an exciting game, who won, who knows, but the at bottom of it who cares, thousands of netballers who are watching. I thought this would all stop once channel 10 took over, but oh No channel 10 is just as bad. 1 game a week shown on free to air channel 10 out of a super weekend games of 8, that is apalling. As I have only foxtel which has no 1 or 11 HD programming I cannot tape these games or watch them. Australia really needs to get its act together on a major sport internationally, is this country just sexest or what. Channel 10 is a disgrace to the sporting netball association, it has not delievered or even less than its original rival channel 2.
how can ONE really know who watched the netball? i have asked everyone i know who does watch it (probably about 30 people whom i see regularly at my social and competition netball games each week), and not one of us has ever been asked to fill in a ratings survey. If that is reflected across the wider community, then perhaps the surveys are not completely accurate?
Thanks for not giving away the winner. I’ll be able to watch all the excitement tonight spoiler free!
If I’m not mistaken, Netball was one of the most watched sports on One (Football aside) and the CommGames final was arguably the most talked about match let alone sport of the entire games.
In NZ, the netballers are as high profile as their League or Union players and get as good coverage… This country can’t seem to do the same…
@Jen I get that and other information on the ratings from my favourite Australian TV blog, tvtonight.com.au
It wasn’t long ago that the Netball associations were crying out for any television coverage. Nowadays, there is quite a bit of Netball shown on free-to-air TV. It may still not have decent ratings, however, it may take time for Netball to grow in television audiences. It can only go uphill.
I just love the angle where people think it’s a sexist dig at women and if it was a “male test match it would be aired live”.
Umm–when’s the last time an Australian Men’s Basketball game was shown Live on FTA?
Get a grip people, Netball isn’t as popular as you think it is!
While the few thousand netball fans are naturally peeved, you can’t fault Ten’s decision with this. As I understand the anti-siphoning legislation they are restricted to broadcasting the match on their main channel first (so not on One) and there is no way that it would’ve outrated Merlin or Masterchef or even H5O for that matter.
Even if it were permitted, it would prob not have got a look-in on One last night as it was chockers with motorsport – MotoGP, Le Mans finish, and a rain-delayed F1.
Obviously, when a bunch of people vent their spleen on your FB page, it can seem like the whole country is of the same mindset. However, this was not reflected in the ratings and the reality is that not many people watched the netball when it was broadcast.
People who claim that Ten are sexist because they aren’t willing to give prime time to an event that won’t be watched by that many people, fail to understand how commercial TV works. The question that should be asked is why was the match scheduled for a Sunday night?
Dustin, where do you get your information from that ‘few people watch televised netball’?
The main part of this article i found fascinating is that there is someone out there with a name of Hetty Spagetti! lol
I can’t believe the below comments justifying Ten’s decision. Why should netball fans have to wait 30 hours after the final whistle was blown to see the match? I think the overwhelming amount of comments on the Ten Facebook page shows how much interest there was in this game. Test matches between Australia and New Zealand are always exciting, passionate and nailbiting encounters; and the last live netball match they televised between the two nations got over 1.6 million viewers…
@Johnson thanks for explaining that. I was wondering why ONE wouldn’t show it live.
Still its in a useless timeslot. I’ve watched a couple of games on TV and its a pretty good coverage and at the games I’ve seen its a been a full house.
Oh please, you would get more people watching the Storm v.s the Cowboys in the pouring rain in Sydney then watch netball.
Maybe if netball could get ratings of over 500,000 (exc comm games) Ten would listen to them. At the moment Ten can’t even broadcast Saturday Night Football live so what hope does the netball have?
Comment from TEN anywhere?
Were the delays due to the bikes and F1?
If netball had been watched by more than just a few thousand on One it would probably still be Live now. The ratings were very low.
I was surprised that the match was played on Sunday night NZ time but you have to ask the netball organisations in both NZ and Australia why they chose the timeslot. I also understand the frustrations of netball fans but several factors lead to the delay: the netball being on the Federal Government’s anti-siphoning list so it must be shown on Ten first; Ten’s existing programming commitments (e.g. Merlin at 6.30pm); and One’s existing commitments to Le Mans 24 hour car race and MotoGP (if netball had been allowed to be shown on One).
On what basis do you say this is a ‘gross misjudgment’? This seems an entirely sensible decision given how few people watch televised netball, the other sporting events that were available for Tern to program last night, and the restrictions imposed on Ten by the ‘anti-siphoning’ list.