Howdy. Special thanks to Rosia for the post immediately below this one. Here's the update on last night's Tennis Channel dinner at Manhattan's iconic, old-school 21 Club, just off Fifth Avenue on 52nd St. I arrived there at about 6:30, shortly after dropping Cowboy Luke off at his play therapy session. The chauffeured limos were already lined up, almost all the way to 6th Avenue. It appears the place is still very popular with Wall Street's Silver Fox set and their wives. I could tell it was their wives because they were wearing prim outfits (think Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice), and a lot of ho-ho-ho red-and-gold -no, and I don't mean that kind of ho. . . I mean Christmas ho-ho-ho.
Woo-hoo, it was time to party like its 1854! The irony is that 21 started as a prohibition-era speakeasy, something about which the Tennis Channel's Ken Solomon (Chairman and CEO) knew a great deal - his grandfather was a founder of the joint.
The dinner was hosted by Australian wine makers, McWilliams, who are going to sponsor some kind of contest to give away a trip to the Australian Open of 2008. I tried their Chardonnay and enjoyed it while I caught up with a passel of USTA and TTC folks. The big news of the evening was that the official announcement that the USTA is now a TTC investor. Here are the answers to some of the questions I asked about that:
I was surprised to learn that TTC is the first entity other than a tournament in which the USTA has chosen to invest. It seems to me a great move because the alliance will now enable TTC to generate a lot more content, at reduced cost, while giving the USTA a potential network platform. Example: with access to the USTA's video library, TTC can put together a variety of historically based features on the U.S. Open or Davis Cup, and the USTA will have an outlet for airing them.
The Tennis Channel presumably will now have extraordinary access to all things USTA, and while that won't affect the broadcasters who have existing contracts, it literally begs for TTC to come up with innovative, value-added coverage of asnd at events like the U.S. Open and Davis Cup. Although TTC won't be doing the USTA's bidding, the working relationship will encourage maximum exploitation of the USTA's resources on a partnership model, rather than a seller-buyer one.
And, as we gaze out at the rapidly changing landscape of content delivery - network, cable, dish, streaming digital - it appears that TTC, which also owns all U.S. rights to the French Open (other than the final weekend NBC network coverage), is now even more well-positioned as the broadcast media hub of the future for the game, while the USTA has a powerful new tool in its box when it comes to building and publicizing the game.
It will take time for all of this to bear fruit, but then I still remember the days when you couldn't go more than four hours on ESPN without seeing at least one show repeated. I think the evolution of content delivery will speed up the kind of process that ESPN went through in its journey from cable midget to SportsWorld superstar, although we have to keep in mind that tennis was, and probably will remain, a niche sport with a limited pool of potential viewers.
Now, if TTC could only get on the television screen of all those viewers. . .