ESPN- The Villain

ESPN has done it again. For no apparent reason , they decided not to show live the French Open semifinals. They were happy to show the recordings in the evening though. Makes me wonder whether it had something to do with the fact that the tournament was in France or it had something to do with the fact that no American could make it that far in the tournament. May be it was both, but neverthless Tennis fans were undone again by ESPN. It reminds me of the Australian Open this year when they decided not to show live the epic semifinal game between Marat Safin and Federar thus robbing Tennis fans of one of the best grand slam semifinals games ever. The reasoning at that time -as far as I could make out- was since it was a game involving two non-americans, it was not worth showing, because they did show the other semifinal between Roddick (american) and Hewitt. This strange behaviour from ESPN is baffling because even commercially it does not make sense. Tennis is a very popular game in US and a grand slam semifinal is sure to find a substantial audience, whether an american is playing or not. It is just unfathomable that ESPN can not (or may be does not want to) acquire rights to broadcast live the semifinals games of a Grand Slam event. Even the puny old National TV in India broadcasts grand slam Tennis live.