Why Televised Golf Is Cratering

“The Tour’s biggest media partner at Comcast has slashed marketing spends, production investment, and is bleeding homes reached via Golf Channel where the Tour’s early round coverage resides for seven more years. Last week, this once mighty one-stop-shop for fans canned or non-renewed more longtime personnel even as the operation was already leaner than it should be for all the hours golf is televised.” – Geoff Shackelford, The Quadrilateral

The reasons are few, yet significant…at least to this golf nut:

• Commercials, commercials, commercials…and more commercials (Did I mention commercials?) How many commercials does Jay Monahan & Co. think we golf nuts will endure? As many as they wish? More commercial time than actual broadcast time? Do they actually believe that viewers accept their silly “Playing Through” split-screen concept as broadcast time? To make matters worse, they are the same damn commercials replayed over and over and over, ad nauseum.
• More broadcast time is spent watching players read their putts than actually putting. And if I never see another player go through his ridiculous Aimpoint routine, it will be too soon! Golf viewers do not tune into a broadcast to watch professional golfers read putts. In fact, we don’t tune in to watch golfers PUTT! We tune in to watch the greatest players in the game hit GOLF SHOTS. I realize that the players are all marching to the same tune out there and are all on the greens, tees, and fairways at essentially the same time, but with all the video replay technology available to them, why don’t the broadcasters cut away from all the green-reading and show the viewers recorded shots by simply saying, “Here’s McIlroy’s shot to the 7th, hit just a moment ago.” Apparently, that takes a level of intelligence they don’t seem to have.
• Speaking of shots, we can do without the interminable amount of time it takes most of these great players to actually pull the trigger. Why do they feel the need to have an executive conference between themselves and their caddie before they can pull the trigger? It is clear to me that this annoying habit of taking too long to hit a shot is a direct result of their college experience where their coach is allowed to follow along with them during their round and “coach” (wet nurse) them on every damn shot. It’s enough to make we viewers pull our hair out…or switch the channel to a real sport…which is what many of us are now doing.
• Annoying in-round interviews are another reason this golf nut can live without televised golf tournaments. Can you imagine Tiger Woods agreeing to be interviewed during any of his tournament rounds back during his prime…or even now? I can’t. Rather than thinking, “Hey, let’s do in-round interviews! That would be SO cool!!”, perhaps they should ask, “What would Tiger do?” And the players should ask themselves the same question when the network asks them to do these ridiculous in-round interviews or walk-and-talks.
• The morbid obsession over rulings is another reason I can live without golf telecasts. Who is the genius that believes we viewers care more about a damn ruling than we do about watching someone tee-off or hit an approach shot or difficult shot around the green? We’ve all seen some of these rulings last five minutes or more with the network staying with them the entire time. Then, after the ruling is finally done, the network cuts to five minutes of commercials. And yet they wonder why golf viewership is dropping like a rock.
• Boring cliches abound in the broadcasts too. Have these broadcasters taken the time to do background research about the players who will be on the day’s broadcast? If I were a golf analyst, I would have a “book” on every single Tour player, and would keep it updated daily. I would also have done background interviews the day before each broadcast of as many of them as possible. Instead, we get anchors and analysts who feed us banal hyperbole over and over and over throughout the week about the same players each and every day.
• Another fun feature of golf telecasts is the ridiculous interview questions, typically from women who seem to know very little if anything about the game and leave viewers with the impression that they are there strictly for “diversity” reasons.

These are some of the reasons I never watch a golf telecast live anymore. I’m sure there are others I have forgotten. I record ALL golf telecasts and keep the remote in my hand, with my trigger finger on the fast-forward button. And I doubt I am alone. Think about that, Jay Monahan. Millions of viewers are seeing none of your commercials. I’m sure your advertisers and sponsors are thrilled at the news.

Televised golf is in a very bad place right now, and the PGA Tour and DP World Tour had better wake up and smell the coffee before it’s too late.

The Head Nut

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