ESPN and Tennis Channel are serving up the Australian Open starting this weekend. ESPN’s coverage begins Sunday at 7p, with over 100 live hours on deck on TV and WatchESPN and 800 hours slated from a record 13 courts on ESPN3. ESPN’s coverage wraps up with the women’s and men’s championships live on ESPN at 3a on Saturday, Jan. 31, and Sunday, Feb. 1, with an encore presentation later that morning at 9a on ESPN2. Programming will see ESPN2 offer daily, marathon, overnight telecasts from Melbourne, primarily starting at 9p through the women’s semifinals, when the action switches to ESPN.
Meanwhile, in its eighth year of Australian Open coverage, Tennis Channel will debut a live, hour-long, daily introductory show. Hosted Brett Haber, Jim Courier, Martina Navratilova and Jon Wertheim, Live at the Australian Open will air most nights from 6-7p immediately preceding the start of the day’s play Down Under. Overall, Tennis Channel will have 11 consecutive days and 40 hours of live coverage at this year’s Australian Open and will devote close to 200 hours to the two-week major. Coverage begins Jan. 19 at 7p, marking the first of 10 days of primetime match play beginning at that time and include the channel’s Australian Open Today daylong block of encore-match and highlight programming.