Australian Open - TV Scheduling

Let me start of by saying the Australian Open is my least favourite tennis tournament. It marks the beginning of another exciting, albeit predictable, tennis season, and it's a wonderful tournament in the beautiful city of Melbourne, but it's location presents a myriad of problems for someone on the other side of the world.

Those of you who know me well know that there are few things in life that I value more than sleep (forget for a moment that I am unemployed and can sleep in however long I want). Having to stay up all hours of the night to watch matches really interferes with my nightly 12-hour snooze. But that's not the worst of it. I single-handedly provide TSN with the ratings it needs to continue as a network. The first thing I do in the morning, for as long as I can remember, is turn on TSN. Every. Single. Day. Over the past 11 days I have not been able to do that. Let me tell you why.

TSN replays the Australian Open matches that actually occurred during the previous night throughout the next day, which I find fantastic. But every single morning, without fail, they report the winners of the matches they are about to replay. I started watching the hockey and basketball highlights on TSN and turning the channel before the tennis review came on, but, alas, I forgot about one very important thing. The ticker. I always seem to glance just as the tennis results are zooming by. After a few days I just stopped watching TSN in the morning, and waited until the matches were replayed, pretending they were being played live. Problem solved. Or so I thought. Often there will be one match replayed, followed by another. I cannot, for the life of me, comprehend why TSN will cut to break, and Mary Carillo will proceed to tell you who wins the NEXT match. Are they hell-bent to ruin the outcome for those of us who are in our pajamas, waiting anxiously for the next match to start? For instance, I was watching a match the other day (I can't remember who), and the next match was Roddick vs. Cilic. To many people's curiosity (Shaun, most of all), I do cheer for Roddick. I watched the first match, then TSN cut immediately to the last game of the 5-setter he played against Cilic, only to replay the entire match again about a half hour later. WHY? Don't show the last game and outcome if you're going to replay the entire thing right after. Idiots.

I have thought long and hard but have yet to come up with a strategy that works for this year, other than actually getting up at 3am to watch the match live. I have devised a fool-proof plan to avoid this in 2011: Go to Australia for two weeks and watch every match.