I cannot believe that I watched that tennis match, wait a minute, WIMBLEDON, for hours, only to be interurrupted by the Cards/Cubs game. I can hear Jay Randolph many times during the year, but Wimbledon is ONCE A YEAR!!! And what a great match it was. Too bad the split screen didn’t allow us to hear the commentary. I am a huge Cardinals fan, and I love the rivalry with the Cubs, but I would gladly miss this game to have watched the end of one of the greatest tennis matches ever played. KSDK really dropped the ball on this one.

The Cards/Cubs game was on other stations for cable viewers. So, KDSK could have run a crawler on the bottom of the screen saying the ballgame would be picked up in progress once tennis was over. And, that fans could watch on TBS/WGN or the radio or whatever in the meantime.

Ha! I actually managed to not laugh while typing this.

This is the “Heidi” dilema but excelled by sports. Remember when a tight game was halted to start the movie Heidi. Well, now we just have shows starting later to make up for late-running games. But, what do you do when one game is starting before another ends. For example, what should/would a station do if a close game between two rivals was still going on at 3:15 when a Rams game was to begin? Outside of the market it’s play game #1 to the end and show game#2 after that already in progress.
But what is the local market to do?

I am glad I am not the GM at KSDK. But, if I was I would make sure KSDK wasn’t so unwatchable every Sunday. From the morning news to the late-night sports show, it’s trading off between “Cardinals, Cardinals, Cardinals” and “Hey, aren’t we so great here at Ch. 5″.

One more gripe about KSDK and Cardinal games.

Why does the closed captioning run at the top of the screen where the score, pitch count, outs are? You cannot read the vital game information for the Closed Captioning.

There seems to be nothing of import at the bottom of the screen, why can’t they run the CCs there?

Cards have (I beleive) a 5 year agreement with KSDK…radio contracts are renewed every two years for affilate stations (different for the flagship stations) Network programming can be moved, altered, delayed or pre-empted per NBC’s aggrement with Channel 5. The Cardinals cannot. For the duration of their contract Channel 5 will have to be creative with Network or other programming. This includes rain delays. They can’t just drop a game and say, Sorry…they have to stay with it throughout.

In trying to please everyone they ticked everyone off. I can see how on paper this looked like a good idea. After all, this is exactly how they sell today’s PIP-equipped TVs: you can watch two things at once! Perfect for the armchair quarterback, catch both of the big games. How could this fail? Gosh, maybe they should’ve run the audio from the Cards on the left channel and tennis on the right!

I wonder if the advent of digital broadcasting next year will give stations the freedom to bump conflicting programs like this to a subchannel, without significant advance notice or planning?

@ suzyjax:

“The Cards/Cubs game was on other stations for cable viewers. So, KDSK could have run a crawler on the bottom of the screen saying the ballgame would be picked up in progress once tennis was over. And, that fans could watch on TBS/WGN or the radio or whatever in the meantime”

TBS was blacked out in St. Louis market (and all of Missouri, Illinois and elsewhere) and the Cubs feed was not on WGN but on Comcast SportsNet Chicago, a station unavailable south of Springfield. So KSDK *was* the only TV option.

I think Channel 5 needs to give up on the Cardinals broadcasts. It seems like they are always making someone mad when broadcasts overlap. I am on the other side of the fence on this one and couldn’t have cared less about the tennis match and was mad I couldn’t watch the Cards game on a full screen. Personally I think Channel 5’s broadcasts of the Cardinals games and their pregame show are absolutely awful. I miss channel 11’s broadcasts! Channel 5 needs to decide if they are going to show national broadcasts or Cards games, it just doesn’t work to do both.

I think KSDK should have cut from both feeds and just played the Walt Disney Classc “Heidi”…

Here’s the deal. It’s tennis. If you are a fan of a second tier sport (and yes, that would be tennis) you should realize by now that you won’t always get to watch your event on prime time local TV. The list of major world sporting events that don’t get local TV coverage is a long one- futbul/soccer championships, The Grey Cup, many college baseball and wrestling events, virtually all NCAA women’s sports or anything beyond Division I, etc. But you don’t see those fans complaining because they understand it’s all economics when it comes to commercial TV.

The tennis match was in England, and neither of these guys were Americans let alone local. So who cares? There’s no way Wimbledon would have had as much local fan interest (or local advertiser support) as a Cubs/Cards game even if there are 162 baseball games in a year. As such, KSDK should have directed Wimbledon fans to the internet to watch it on their website and just stuck with the baseball game.

It’s not about kissing up to the Cardinals. Commercial TV has never been about pleasing fans- it’s about pleasing advertisers. If you didn’t get the 1968 Heidi reference above, NBC (and yes, KSDK) cut from a live football game to a Disney movie 40 years ago to please Timex who had paid a lot of money to sponsor the movie. KSDK’s airtime has always been for sale, nothing has changed.

I am a Cardinals fan and loving watching the games as much as the next guy – especially Cards/Cubs, but who was in charge of making one of the most bone-headed decisions in sports television history? I would love to know what the thought process was behind this decision. Why would KSDK as a TV station, that attempts to have the best sports department in the area, decide to blunder one of the greatest, if not greatest ever, Wimbledon Championship matches that mind you was already IN PROGRESS in a fifth set (rare to have a 5 set match in a major championship final) so it was already easily reasonable for an educated sports fan to conclude they were watching one of the greatest matches in tennis history as the 5-time defending champ was attempting to come back from a 2 sets to nothing deficit and achieve what no man has achieved since the 1800s and never in the open era by winning 6 straight Wimbledon titles?

Any person of sufficient mental sports capacity should realize that putting such a monumental tennis match in a side-by-side picture with one of 162 regular season Cardinals baseball games (one of roughly 18 that are played against the Cubs each year) was a terrible idea but then KSDK went on to further magnify an already poor decision by playing the audio of baseball commentators (I really need to hear Mike Shannon babble on about tennis by the way) and associated commercials rather than much more crucial audio from the tennis, especially considering that a viewer could have easily tuned their radio into 550 AM if they had wanted the baseball play-by-play. It is sad when I have to sit literally directly in front of a 50-inch high def TV with the volume muted in order to try and concentrate on sports history in the making – struggling to determine if tennis shots were being called out, whether the match would potentially be postponed on account of darkness or what players were visibly distressed about during key components of the late games. (speaking of darkness, KSDK producers should have been able to conclude that the tennis coverage would inevitably end by a certain time, such that only the first few innings of the baseball game would be missed, given the dwindling daylight and no source of artificial light on Wimbledon’s center court so that if the 5th set, which is not settled by a tiebreaker, should continue for an extended period of time, it would be necessary for the match to be postponed until Monday – I guess they didn’t think of that though either.)

The outcome of KSDK’s decision was a complete injustice to true sports fans, tennis fans and Cardinals fans alike in the St. Louis area. I’m so thankful that your parent company handled the Monday finish to the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in a much more professionally manner. Could you have imagined watching Tiger Woods vs. Rocco Mediate play one of the greatest golf matches on a split screen with Days of Our Lives (of course the audio would have to be Days of Our Lives as well)?

If KSDK couldn’t have found a way to put the tennis match or the baseball game on an NBC sister channel, as others have suggested and was apparenlty considered, clearly the early innings of the Cardinals game should have been pre-empted by the Wimbledon coverage. Heck, you could have shown recap highlights of the early baseball innings during the tennis commercials if you really wanted. Not to mention there are many ways for a person in St. Louis to enjoy the Cubs/Cardinals series (i.e. go to the game itself, tv, radio, etc.) but pretty much only one realistic way to watch Wimbledon.

What was KSDK thinking? I would say the station owes St. Louis sports fan an apology, but I don’t think that would suffice as you have already robbed us of enjoying one of the greatest live moments in sports history. Perhaps the best course of action would be for KSDK to relinquish its local programming control to the national level and let CW11 or Fox Sports Midwest televise all future Sunday Cardinals games. Sounds like the Cardinals really control KSDK - seeing they already conceded to delay the start of the game by an hour that day at the request. Sadly it is all about dollars in today’s world and not viewer’s choice.

Wonder what would have happened if say Game 7 of the World Series was on with the Cardinals tied in the 9th inning but first quarter action from a worthless Ram’s football game was about to start, think Fox would go to split screen and Ram’s audio over the national World Series programming?

NEWSchannel 5’s broadcasts of Cardinals baseball is horrible! The only way that I can stand to watch there telecast is to turn the volume down and turn on the radio to listen to KTRS. Sunday is game day? Are you kidding me? Sunday is groan day! I can’t help but groan as I listen to Jay Randolph as the rest of the NEWSchanel 5 personnel cover the game. I wish I had the money at my disposal to allow Channel 11 to pick up the games that FSN does not cover. NEWSchannel 5 should stick to what they claim to do best - the news!