BY DC CUEVA
As this summer rolls along, it's likely that you've spent a day catching up on your favorite shows all being in that same position in your house for several hours at a time. For me, I will have chances to do that, as well as likely losing a little work productivity, starting late next week when this sports fan's greatest passion - the Olympics - take center stage and will be, along with the closing stages of AYTO Season 4, the principal focus of this site come the end of this Rivals III season. But if catching up on half a season of your favorite drama, or a full season of your favorite reality show is one thing, it's certainly another for those who follow one of the world's greatest sports to follow one of their grandest events and what they got to do last week during this Summer of Sports.
 |
| Miller, Tirico and Hicks (L-R) at NBC's 18th tower at The Open. Credit: @MikeTirico |
Two weeks ago saw the culmination of a 21-year journey for the first of its kind specialty sports network: a TV channel dedicated to covering only one sport. In the early morning on Thursday, July 14, or late Wednesday night on the west coast, Golf Channel televised, for the first time in its history, one of the four men's major championships when it showed European Tour icon Colin Montgomerie's opening tee shot which began The Open at Royal Troon Golf Club in Scotland. Golf Channel was co-founded in 1995 by one of the icons of the sport - Arnold Palmer, and pioneered a part of the sports media industry before major leagues, conferences and teams could have their own channel. Comcast acquired full control of the channel several years later, and joined the NBC Universal family upon the cable-com's acquisition of the Peacock's suite of networks and assets from GE in 2011.
Golf on television is unique where every major broadcaster in the U.S. has at least a slice of the pie in televising tournaments big and small, drawing in a rich, affluent audience and devoting resources to covering 18 hole coverage for several hours over four days. It is also very different from other sports on TV: announcers sounding more like people talking at church than at a stadium, players playing at a slower pace than most other sports, and where there's more sights of nature and beauty than your typical sports broadcast. But that's very much the way it is for a sport as genteel & unique as golf. And the sport has ridden the wave of the Tiger & Phil era to see immense growth in viewership and TV exposure, with PGA TOUR events airing each week on broadcast TV.
For Golf Channel, it's a 360° business in serving the game's loyal fans everyday with thousands of hours of tournament coverage from all the major tours, plus daily news coverage, instructional programs and original shows - including the fun & incisive Feherty featuring the sport's resident funny man, David Feherty. And the network has wide-ranging digital and grassroots efforts to help grow the game. And for NBC, its golf footprint has substantially increased since former longtime sports head Dick Ebersol asked 2-time major winner Johnny Miller to become their analyst in 1990. His honest, candid analysis - notably his mentions of a player "choking" under pressure late in the final round - has become the stuff of legend, and he's been the spark plug to NBC's telecasts of the U.S. Open, Ryder Cup and PGA Tour.
In mid-July, both networks came together to televise The Open - Golf Channel's first men's major and NBC's return to this prestigious foursome after it lost the U.S. Open to FOX. This was the perfect way to put into play the combined philosophy of GC serving golf fans 24/7 and NBC's big event nature and experience televising golf, and putting in all the resources the networks have to cover the year's 3rd major in only a way they can. Sports media blogger Ken Fang tweeted @FangsBites, "Even though this is the first time NBC/Golf Channel is airing #TheOpen, it seems like they've been doing it for years. @GolfChannel has been on air since 1:30 am ET with #TheOpen, giving a clinic on how major golf coverage should be done. Comfy fit." And it was as, Fang would later write in his blog that NBC and Golf Channel "set a new standard for televising major golf."
And it seems as if The Open fit hand in glove with how Golf Channel and NBC cover this game year-round: from tee to green. For their first time covering this July tradition, it more than doubled the amount of TV coverage allocated to the year's most-watched golf tournament, The Masters which has 20 hours on CBS and ESPN by showing The Open from the first tee shot of the 1st round until the last one on final round Sunday. Thus, Golf Channel was on-air from 1:30 AM ET (6:30 AM UK) and the first wave of golfers teeing off, until 3:30 PM ET (8:30 PM UK) when the last group finished on 18 on both Thursday and Friday - 14 & a half hours both days. In all, 50 hours was televised by both networks, including live weekend coverage returning to free to air network TV in the U.S. after spending the last six years on ESPN, all as it's the opposite in Britain itself with live Open coverage moving to pay TV and Sky Sports from the BBC.
In addition, they followed through on a pledge given by longtime producer Tommy Roy -- whose dad has a golf pedigree having played in Scotland as well -- to show each & every golfer over the first two rounds - all 155 of them from the world's top players to those with no chance to win but were lucky to play their way into the only major played outside the U.S. in the game's homeland. In addition to Feherty and Miller, The Open was the perfect venue for the newest addition to the NBC family, Mike Tirico, to make his Peacock debut and continuing his trips abroad to Britain, having done 19 of them at ESPN & ABC as golf host (Disney on-sold this year's event to NBC in the midst of their budget crunch). And with all the network's top talent - including 3-time Open champion Nick Faldo - on their broadcast team, it shows the depth of a group who covers this sport 52 weeks a year, compared to ESPN and FOX which only cover the sport a few weeks a year around their packed rights portfolio.
In a year that's seen a monumental collapse by defending Masters champion Jordan Spieth in April, Dustin Johnson overcoming a rules snafu to emphatically win the U.S. Open, and with the Olympics and Ryder Cup still to come, The Open continued what's been the most anticipated year for golf in many years. It began with Phil Mickelson coming centimeters short of shooting a major record 62 in round 1 and leading the early rounds, continued with him and Sweden's Henrik Stenson going on a weekend duel that saw both of them separate from the pack, and an epic final round. The 5-time major champ and the Swede essentially played match play on Sunday until Stenson pulled away and with a birdie on the 18th tied shot a final round 63...all as Johnny Miller watched it from the 18th hole tower.
With this epic tournament delivering the kind of compelling drama fans expect when the world's best golfers come together, the NBC and Golf Channel team put in a gigantic effort to cover The Open and, with only a few early problems, it was flawless and representative of why I and others who follow sports media call them the best in the business. The Winners' List credits the 200 or so people the Peacock had on site in Scotland - including executive producers Molly Solomon and Roy, who brought home that 50-hour golf binge fest. Now, an even taller task awaits the Golf Channel team and everyone who works for NBC: 6,700+ hours of Olympic coverage in Rio which begins next week, including golf's Olympic return... they'll more than live up to the challenge.
- DC
