Your Wimbledon questions answered
- 4 Jul 06, 12:17 PM
Thanks for all your feedback on our coverage of Wimbledon. We really do want to hear what you have to say - and I've answered some of the questions you've been asking, here.
Why are the highlights on at the earlier time of 2000 BST?
We're trying to provide the best possible schedule for Wimbledon fans. Audience research suggests there's real appetite for people coming in from work wanting to join our coverage.
We’ve therefore extended the daily BBC Two schedule so that it runs from 6pm to 9pm (BST).
We want to make this programme as strong and consistent as possible and include all the best action of the day, so we are devoting the final hour to a full round-up of Today at Wimbledon.
Looking back at previous years we've found that our live coverage of Centre Court and Number One court is often finished by 8pm – weather permitting!
However, on occasions we appreciate significant live play may run past 8pm, so we do have provision for running a later highlights programme at 11.20 if we are not able to bring viewers a highlights programme at the billed time.
We appreciate that it will take a while for viewers to acclimatise to the new times and we will review after the championships this year.
Live tennis is always available via our interactive service when play is happening on one of the televised courts. So with the five separate streams coming from Wimbledon, on demand highlights at bbc.co.uk/wimbledon and our programming on BBC One and BBC Two we do offer our viewers an enormous choice.
Why do you come away from games on your Interactive service while they are midway through?
It’s inevitable in the day-to-day decisions we make regarding the transmission from Wimbledon that we won’t please everyone! If we choose to overrun our pre-arranged transmission schedule to stay with a match we upset the non-sport audience and similarly if we cut away at a crucial point we upset our tennis fans.
It’s often a close judgement call on the day. We will try to go with what we believe the majority of our audience would want.
Lots of factors affect our decisions, it depends who is on court, when the match will finish, if it will finish that night etc and also the billed programmes that would be replaced or delayed.
Why do you have music playing in the background when Sue Barker is talking?
There's always lots of debate over the use of music and we know some viewers find it irritating. We do try to use music that doesn’t compete with the presenter’s voice, so we try to select carefully.
We use music as a way of making our presentation as pacy, creative and interesting as possible and on many occasions we feel music enhances the production.
We try to provide a style of coverage that we believe the majority of our audience would enjoy.
In addition, we do use music as a way of telling our audience we are doing something different for example when we put a round-up into a section of live play.
Why is there so much commentary and why do they talk so much?!
This is something we are very mindful of and we do get a lot of viewer feedback on this topic.
There’s no question some of our audience would like less commentary. However, we're not sure this is appropriate for a broad non-expert tennis audience as we're trying to cater for the majority, as well as giving viewers who are new to tennis a greater understanding of the game.
Every match that we cover has a dedicated match director who monitors the commentary and gives feedback if commentators are talking too much.
Does the BBC draw up the schedule of matches at Wimbledon?
Ultimately all decisions rest with the All England Club.
The BBC as well as a large number of foreign broadcasters can put in requests regarding the order of play.
Wimbledon then balances the needs of all the different broadcasters covering the championships. Our colleagues from Japanese and American television for example may put in requests that reflect that time differences in those countries.
Why do you have so much punditry and chat?
We are on the air for 150 hours on BBC One and Two and we feel within that time it's important to set up the players and build them as personalities and as characters. We also think that it is right that we reflect the event in terms of the big stories and behind the scenes.
If someone is going to sit down and enjoy a long match and they are not a dedicated tennis fan, then we think a little background to the players can really enhance their enjoyment.
We're also very proud of our line-up of pundits who offer wonderful opinions and insight into the sport.
Why do you always focus so much on the Brits?
We're trying to cater for a British audience. Isn’t it reasonable after all for us to cover British matches as we are the British Broadcasting Corporation?
Nevertheless we always try to offer the big matches of the day and the matches featuring the top seeds.
With our interactive service offering up to five matches at any one time we hopefully cater for the interests of all our audience.
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