What's the score at Wimbledon? You tell me
One of the things the graphic experts at ESPN2 are trying for this year's Wimbledon coverage is a new way of conveying the score of a live match as a strip across the top of the screen.
Confused yet?
Take this morning's Roger Federer-Robin Soderling second-round match as a poor example of what we're seeing:
If you just tuned into the ESPN2 coverage above, you'd guess Federer is serving (because of the yellow arrow), but would you necessarily guess that he's leading? Of course he is. But play along.
Does the (30-0) 6-3, 2-1 easily relay to you that Federer has that lead in the match?
Now here's the same match available on ESPN Interactive TV, supplied by DirecTV Channel 703:
The traditional stacked score box in the top left corner makes it much easier to decipher, but you don't know the score of the first set, right?
On Tuesday, if you happened to get into Andy Murray's match against Fabrice Santoro midway through, the ESPN2 streamlined scoreline may have looked like this:
SANTORO ......... > A. MURRAY ... 15-30 ... 3-6, 4-6, 4-4
The viewer is to eventually guess that Murray is up two sets (since the set scores are in order of the players listed) yet trails in this game (since the score is written with the server first).
Would it have been better to do it this way:
SANTORO .... 3 4 4 30
MURRAY ....... 6 6 4 15
ESPN production folk said going into this year's coverage, the change in the scoreline was so that the graphic doesn't cover up areas of the court. It is supposed to make for a cleaner screen.
We're not sold. Yet. Maybe it's that same adjustment we all had to make when Fox introduced the permanent on-screen score and time box for NFL games.
Some sports, spreading the scoreline horizontally works. In tennis, where the score is confusing enough to the novice viewer, this probably complicates matters.
As a side note, for those who've only been watching the ESPN2 coverage this week, there's less action that you'd expect. Like viewing an NBC Olympics. A lot of the chatting going on between matches may be necessary considering the ESPN employees over there who are supposed to be creating story lines. But for those who just want to watch action, the DirecTV ESPN Interactive channel 701 (the main mix screen below) shows what's on Channels 702 to 707. Even with unknown broadcasters describing matches that aren't on Centre Court, it paints a much broader stroke of the event.
The DirecTV mix will be available through Friday's matches.
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