CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | Contact
The Australian Open’s exclusive broadcast partner, Channel Nine, will today be rolling out the most prominent ‘ic’ on their payroll, in an effort to win back over Eastern Europeans audiences.
The network has moved quickly after Serbian tennis fans took offence to comments made by Nine journalist Tony Jones during the weekend’s live coverage of the event.
Furthermore, the greatest tennis star of all time, Serbia’s Novak Djokovic, has vowed to boycott all interviews with the Australian Open host broadcaster Channel Nine until he receives an apology over comments made by Tony Jones over the weekend.
During a live cross on Saturday, Jones ridiculed the Serbian fans by describing their hero as ‘overrated’ and a ‘has-been’.
As a supposed ‘Tennis expert’ – it is a shock to everyone that Tony Jones was not aware that talking shit about Eastern Europeans during the Australian Open would result in severe backlash from a extremely patriotic and highly competitive fanbase.
But it’s not just the fans that thought Jones missed the mark. The 10-times Australian Open champion at the centre of the drtama has labelled the comments to be “insulting and offensive”. He then chose not to speak on court to Jim Courier after snatching his spot in the quarter-finals for the 15th time in Melbourne.
With the over-leveraged Channel Nine paying out the arse for the last broadcast rights that actually make money in Australian TV, the entertainment network hasn’t even tried to brush off this comments as ‘light-hearted’ – and has instead forced Tony Jones to make an apology.
But with Djokovic very likely to go all the way through to the finals, it seems that Tony Jones might not be the right man to cover the later stages of this tournament.
Instead Nine will be sending in the promiment Serbian-Australian TV news anchor, Карл Стефановић, who’s name is phonetically pronounced ‘Karl Stefanovic’.
Speaking to The Betoota Advocate today, Mr Стефановић says he had just returned from weekend mass and was sitting down to a homecooked lunch of sarma, gibanica and pljeskavica – when he heard the comments made by Tony Jones.
“I knew then that I would be heading to Melbourne to clean up this mess” says Стефановић.
“I’ve got cousins in Footscray and Sunshine, so I’m just staying with them for now”
