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Split screen leads to big ratings and confused viewers
2008-07-07 13:51
by Bob Timmermann

Tom Hoffarth of the Daily News in his Farther Off the Wall Blog listed the markets in the U.S. that got the highest overnight Nielsen ratings for the Nadal-Federer match at Wimbledon.

And the top market was St. Louis. St. Louis, home of Dwight Davis, the man who started the Davis Cup!

But no so fast...

My St. Louis-living brother, who is actually in Berlin now, informed that because the match ran long, the channel in St. Louis showing it ran into a problem because it also had to show the Cubs-Cardinals game, starting at 2:15 pm Central Time.

So, what did the station, KSDK, do? They went to a split screen and showed baseball and tennis simultaneously. This turned out not to be very popular with fans of either tennis, baseball, or human beings with binocular vision. You can find an image of what the screen looked in this link from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Also, without looking it up, what do you think was the total difference in points won between Nadal and Federer for the match?

Comments
2008-07-07 14:30:07
1.   Eric Enders
Am I jumping to conclusions by inferring from the "Wimbleton" spelling that the Post-Dispatch doesn't care much about tennis either?
2008-07-07 14:43:38
2.   Bob Timmermann
The caption guy messed up.
2008-07-07 15:17:53
3.   Cliff Corcoran
Federer won his two sets via tiebreaks, while Nadal won his three sets on games, so I'd put Federer at +4 points (2 points per tie break) and Nadal at +12 points (2 points per game, thus 4 points per set), so I'd say Nadal +8 points over the course of the entire match of 60 games and two tie breaks.
2008-07-07 15:40:21
4.   Bob Timmermann
It was less than 8.
2008-07-07 15:46:26
5.   Eric Stephen
What the heck was going on in the background of that screen capture?
2008-07-07 16:16:45
6.   Bob Timmermann
5
Looks like an American flag image.
2008-07-07 16:27:41
7.   Zak
195-194 Nadal?

I'm semi-cheating because during the broadcast, I think late 4th set or early 5th set, it was 157-157.

2008-07-07 16:42:33
8.   Bob Timmermann
The New York Times graphic I read at lunch said the final score was Nadal 209, Federer 204.

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