Ivanisevic's Win Draws Record Ratings In U.S., Australia
MSNBC's live broadcast of Monday's Goran Ivanisevic-Patrick Rafter Wimbledon men's final from 7:00-10:30am ET "more than tripled the TV ratings the cable channel averages for that time slot," according to the AP's Howard Fendrich. About 770,000 viewers tuned in for the match, producing a 1.0 cable rating. MSNBC averages a 0.3 for that time slot. The taped telecast of the match, aired later on NBC at 10:00am, drew a 3.0 Nielsen overnight (AP, 7/10)....In Melbourne, Geoff McClure reports, with the Australian Rafter in the final, Channel Nine in Melbourne drew an audience of 1.11 million, the "biggest tennis audience in Australian TV history." McClure adds, "Equally impressive were the nationwide figures, with another million-plus audience in Sydney and rating peaks of more than 500,000 in Brisbane and Perth and 400,000 in Adelaide, reaping Nine a five-city total of more than 3.5 million viewers" (AGE, 7/11).
POPULAR ON THE WEB, TOO: On Monday, wimbledon.org recorded over 3.4 million hits-per-minute at one point during the men's final. By comparison, the official Olympics site during the '00 Sydney Games had a high of 1.2 million. Also, 3.2 million unique visitors from 165 countries registered 208 million page views during the tournament (THE DAILY)....IBM "introduced special equipment to help TV viewers, commentators, Web site visitors and even the players themselves keep track of the scores and statistics" (THESTANDARD.com, 7/10).
WHAT DID HE SAY? Ivanisevic, during a ceremony in his homeland of Croatia that was attended by nearly 200,000 people, said of a lineswoman and linesman who "made questionable calls" during the championship match, "That ugly, ugly lady — she was really ugly, very serious, you know. ... And that guy, he looks like a faggot little bit, you know. This hair all over him." In L.A., Diane Pucin: "As troubling as the comments are, equally as troubling is the double standard that seems to exist. ... Imagine, had Richard [Williams] been asked after the match about those calls, and he said what Ivanisevic said." Pucin notes in the L.A. Times, there was "no mention of the quote." In the N.Y. Times, it was in the 16th paragraph of the main story. The Chicago Tribune referred only to Ivanisevic's "rude" comments. The Washington Post mentioned it four paragraphs from the bottom of its story (L.A. TIMES, 7/11).
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