Jay Monahan announced changes to the PGA Tour’s fall broadcast schedule.
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If you have found yourself complaining about the state of PGA Tour broadcasts over the past few years, give yourself a pat on the back.
Your goals were never “wrong.” You are not “shouting into the void”. You helped create the real, applicable change on the PGA Tour; change that will hit tournament broadcasts this fall.
At least, that’s the latest according to tournament commissioner Jay Monahan, who gave the latest state of the state press conference on Wednesday in the tournament championship.
The final event of the PGA Tour regular season was an ideal time to announce a new slate of changes coming to the Tour for the commish. Given Monahan’s unenviable role in not reporting (again) developments in the PGA Tour’s peace negotiations with the Saudi PIF, a few flashy toys were helpful, if not necessary, to appease a nervous public. unhappy golfer. And what better topic to announce improvements than the quality of telecasts, which have plagued the tour for years?
The title is a new “pilot program” aimed at testing some new broadcast improvements during Golf Channel’s Friday broadcasts of the Tour’s new “fall series.” The program, Monahan said, would rely on real-time fan feedback to provide new ideas and gauge the effectiveness of their suggestions.
“On Thursday we will show the fans a traditional broadcast. Then on Friday, the launch will adopt new features based on fan feedback,” Monahan said. “We’ll then survey fans to test their preferences, and that intelligence will help us further innovate the broadcasts with fans. our more in the driver’s seat.”
At face value, the announcement marks a significant change in the way the PGA Tour does its business on television, but the reality is a bit more complicated. The truth is that stakeholders across the sports world already rely heavily on audience feedback to help drive production decisions; The tournament decision simply formalizes and accelerates these efforts enormously.
The Tour can afford this in part because Golf Channel’s telecasts during the fall season are already some of the smallest audiences of the year, a development expected to continue with the FedEx Cup Fall defense under golf’s new schedule. If the Tour was just hoping to get reactions from the biggest and boldest, well, those watching on Thursday and Friday afternoons in the middle of the football season would certainly qualify.
“I think what we’ve heard from the fans and what we’re working with our partners at Golf Channel to test, some of the topics you might see us address, number one, the ability to see more shots and potentially less shooter shot. “, said Monahan. “You’ll see a number of other streaming innovations that we’ll continue to test as we go forward.”
The new schedule comes as questions mount about the health of the Tour’s television products. Ratings were down more than 15 percent for one of the Tour’s television partners in 2024, a result with many possible explanations, among them declining viewer interest in week-to-week golf following LIV’s intervention in sports. These developments are not cause for extreme concern on the PGA Tour, at least not immediately, but they are a warning sign given the extent of change that has engulfed golf in recent seasons. Efforts to improve tournament broadcasts may not directly correlate to larger audiences, but there’s no question that a better viewing product would quell viewers’ recent aversion to the pro game.
Monahan said the tournament will also include feedback from Golf Channel employees as part of the new program. Project dates were not immediately available.
