TGL’s first broadcast went live on Tuesday, January 7th at 9pm ET
Getty Images
Hello folks, and welcome to an emergency edition of the Hot Mic Newsletter. Tonight we’re talking all things TGL, which kicked off Tuesday night in Palm Beach with a bang. We’ll have much more to discuss as more information becomes available about the league’s TV ratings, and if you’d like to hear more about it subscribe herebut in the meantime, let’s talk about what we watched.
THE BIG NEWS
In the end, I thought the much-surprised launch of TGL on ESPN was… good. The broadcast ran for a shade over two technically sound hours, featured an all-out blast and didn’t leave a bitter taste in the mouths of most who tuned in. For a sports league in Season 1, Episode 1 — one that was perfectly transparent about the fact that its broadcasts are only going to get better from here — it feels like a good place to be.
division
Things were moving in an odd direction half an hour before TGL went live at 9:00 PM ET, when the end of the Duke-Pitt basketball game appeared to be bumping into TGL’s scheduled time, threatening to disrupt the inaugural broadcast with the greatest of television banalities: a coverage delay. Mercifully the game turned into a blowout, they ran out the clock and it went under the wire, but the initial flicker of anxiety seemed to hang over the first half of the TGL broadcast.
TGL didn’t show a shot for the first full 15 minutes of action, opting for a series of player interviews and a brief league overview before getting into the action. Scott Van Pelt’s involvement provided a legitimate dose of credibility and comfort to the production, but he gave an entry far removed from his DC studio and the space-time gap was strange. The whole ordeal felt a bit like explaining the rules of a board game before you’d even played a turn – no one seemed to retain the information and everyone seemed a bit angry to boot.
But then the action started with Shane Lowry’s opening touchdown, and the broadcast was fired from a cannon. The biggest lesson of TGL’s opening broadcast – and perhaps the entire opening day – is that the league’s shot clock is a revelation. Gone is the tedium of non-stop pre-shoot messes and the inherent lull of televised golf. If nothing else, TGL move, and that alone gives the format a real chance to survive.
The telecast was structured in three stanzas. Opening five holes, then a commercial break; the middle five holes, then a commercial break; then a short “break” hosted by Van Pelt, another commercial break, and the final five holes. Of course, the pace slowed a bit as the contest progressed and the intrigue of the activities on the field of play dissipated as The Bay opened up a blowout lead over NYGC. But there was enough to hold your attention until the match was decided, which was around the 8th hole.
The biggest question after Week 1 is TGL’s continued balance between flash and substance. Tuesday’s broadcast felt a bit like a big bowl of powdered sugar for dinner. I briefly felt the dopamine hit, of course I went through an energy high, but in the end I felt a little empty. Is the contest supposed to be serious, funny, or some combination of the two? I’m not upset that I saw, but I still can’t answer that question. I suspect TGL is still feeling that comfort zone itself.
GOLDEN STARS
Shot time: The clock was set for about 15 seconds before most golf fans began to rethink the PGA Tour’s approach to enforcing pace of play rules. It’s a wonderful innovation, and it’s the innovation that gives TGL hope to survive even as the concept becomes less novel as time goes on.
Camera setup: There are about 70 cameras eavesdropped throughout the SoFi Center like Secret Service Agents—executive producer Jeff Neubarth specially designed the league’s camera gear to be invisible from others TV cameras, and therefore invisible to people at home. It felt like every camera angle was used in some way throughout the action, and save for a few extremely oversaturated bunker-cam shots, it was all shot rather smoothly. In a nod to the production team’s efforts, shots didn’t feel overly choreographed or boring to watch after the ball hit the simulator screen.
Virtual golf holes: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I really enjoyed the craziness of some of TGL’s virtual models. Visual extremes play very well on TV. If I had one criticism of the contest, it was that we needed it more cheated holes. What a world.
Microphones: No reasonable viewer expected ESPN anchor Matt Barrie to have communication with a group of golfers 85 yards away down to an exact science tonight, but the back-and-forth will be important to the long-term entertainment value of TGL’s telecasts . The functionality worked, providing a few bits of personality from the golf stars without going over the top. Xander Schauffele performed particularly well.
please: Van Pelt, ESPN’s voice of the PGA Championship and Masters, provided significant credibility to TGL immediately. His pre- and post-game interviews (the last part of his midnight Sports Center with SVP) they were cutting and effortless. Players clearly have a rapport with him, and his decades of golfing experience make him uniquely adept at threading the needle between golf’s traditional dialect and its new simulator jargon. Even his touch of self-deprecation for the (slightly awful) caricature created by TGL’s marketing team was deft. I was a fan of his inclusion all the way through.
TEN FOR IMPROVEMENT
Live chat: It was hard to parse the noise Tuesday night. What was the player talk? What was the broadcaster’s joke? What was part of an interview with guests Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy? What music was blasting over the SoFi Center? To me it seemed like there was so much to say that it was difficult to hear anything at all. A few personalities shined here, but the coming weeks will feature many more.
