While Jay Monahan was at the DP World Tour’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, his vision for the future of golf TV began to take shape.
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Golf fans want change.
Golf fans need change.
And the TV? TV is a good place to start.
For years, fans have been miserable about the state of golf broadcasts. The reason? A series of contradictory (but no less cardinal) acts against the golf-watching public. Depending on who you ask, the coverage is too slow, fails to capture enough of the golf, or moves too quickly, focusing more on a bunch of golf shots than a compelling narrative. The coverage is too broad – it tells too much of the story, but not enough relevant them – or is too narrow, failing to show more than the leaders. For the only thing that everyone can agree is that they are unhappy … and this they see a lot of ads.
This fall, the PGA Tour is trying to bring about change with a new TV-focused pilot program. The program, which will run during the tournament’s Friday afternoon telecasts on Golf Channel throughout the fall season, aims to experiment with a host of possible changes to improve the viewing experience for fans.
Last week at the Sanderson Farms Championship, we got our first look at the changes outlined by Golf Channel, with more expected to arrive in the coming weeks. Below, we’ve rounded up the three we’ve seen so far and think you’re most likely to notice.
1. Extended player interviews
The walk-and-talk is one of the innovations that golf broadcasters have celebrated the most over the past five years, and with good reason. After CBS convinced Augusta National to participate in interviews during the ’23 Masters, it seemed the technology was well on its way to becoming a staple of our golf-watching lives week after week.
This has proven to be half-true, with fewer big-name players choosing to participate in interviews over time. In the fall, Golf Channel and the PGA Tour are aiming to revive interviews by expanding the territory of player interview settings, allowing a “designated interviewer” to get close to players on the course.
Bigger questions remain about what those interviews will deliver for viewers at home. (After a clash with Mackenzie Hughes over a Q&A (during the Genesis Invitational in February, the Tour stipulated in a memo that players would only be asked about on-course developments and interviews would remain entirely voluntary.) However, expanding to a strategy that more closely represents Sky’s DP World Tour coverage Sports would be a development welcomed by fans.
2. A long-outdated cutline strategy
For years, the Tour and its broadcast partners have operated with an antiquated system of “projected lines” based on scores counted during Friday rounds, although analytics capable of more accurately guessing the probabilistic edge are become more popular.
At Sanderson Farms, however, the Golf Channel experimented an analytics-focused approach in the predicted cut. The network also shifted its coverage and graphic treatment to focus more on the players grinding to get through the weekend, even staying on the air late into the evening until the cut was made.
The changes represent a small but significant shift in Friday afternoon coverage of the tournament — and a new answer to a perennial question surrounding how to approach low ratings on Friday nights.
3. Narrowing the focus
We can argue whether the Golf Channel “Closer to the pin” the focus on Sanderson Farms’ 13 was ultimately additional to network coverage. (The general social media frenzy about the “Going For It” network sound effects/graphics would suggest otherwise.) But the broader strategy of tightening the focus during the early rounds on a specific hole or stretch of holes seems sound, especially when looking ahead to some of the tour’s more obvious destinations like TPC Sawgrass or Riviera.
That idea may not ultimately be a long-term holdover for the Golf Channel, but with coverage moving to Utah for the first round of the Black Desert Championship to a much more visually appealing tournament host, the strategy may seem a bit more reasonable.
1 change that will NOT be experimented with
The biggest change golf fans are looking for — fewer commercials — isn’t likely to be found during any of the PGA Tour’s Friday telecasts this fall. The reasons for this are many and also few: The PGA Tour has signed a deal for broadcast rights requesting a certain amount of advertising shown during every telecast.
While it’s nice to theorize about a life with fewer games and interruptions, it is we are unlikely to see any significant change to those ends at least until the end of the decade, when the Tour’s last set of rights with NBC and CBS expires.
The good news is that networks like CBS have shown us that it is possible to improve the quality of golf telecasts within the parameters of the Tour’s commercial structure. The bad news is, for fans hoping to see a future of golf television with, well, more golfthese improvements will have to wait.
