On Sunday afternoon in a mobile TV control room at Sherwood Country Club, 32-year-old Brandt Packer made one final countdown from 10 that closed out a piece of TV golf history. When Packer emotionally hit zero, ABC Sports officially signed off from all PGA Tour golf for at least six years.
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In a way it will be sad for viewers who will be limited in the way golf is done. But for those working on those shows, they have lost their livelihood and many still haven't found work for 2007. When Monday Night Football signed off from ABC last year, most of the crew moved over from ABC to the NBC Sunday Night Football package, but for those on the ABC/ESPN and USA golf crews, the same won't happen as NBC, CBS, and Golf Channel have their own folks that will just get a lot more work for 2007.
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When the TV contracts were revealed last year the PGA Tour propaganda machine told us of the benefits of the new agreement; it will be interesting if the Tour is right and how this will all play out.
The last time the tour made a radical change in TV contracts was in 2000 when they discarded ESPN from the Champions Tour and replaced it with CNBC, who offered not only more money but the control that the Tour was looking for in letting PGA Tour Productions produce all of the telecasts. This proved not only to be a big failure, as the contract never got completed with Golf Channel finishing the obligation, but it seriously hurt the growth of the Champions Tour.Will this happen in the future with the new TV packages?
Maybe, but the odds are against that; the tour, CBS, and NBC will not let that happen. As for the Golf Channel, a lot will be determined by how much that network grows over time and if more people will find the channel. So the PGA Tour is betting this happens in a big way.
Still, it's interesting to look at how all of this happened. Many will wonder why they won't be able to watch the team of Nick Faldo, Mike Tirico, and Paul Azinger again, many will miss hearing from Peter Alliss or the fact that Judy Rankin will only be heard reporting on PGA Tour golf at the British Open and the early rounds of the U.S. Open. Many will also miss out on the excellent PGA Tour Sunday show. One thing that won't be missed will be the tones of Karl Ravitch, who could be the worst announcer golf has ever seen but that is another story.
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In looking at the history of TV and golf, CBS and ABC were the first to do golf in the early 60s. With the advent of Arnold Palmer and the excitement that he brought, TV grew very quickly. By 1966 ABC made a major commitment with the PGA Tour and was also covering the U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship, while CBS had the Masters and several PGA Tour events. By the time the 70s rolled around the networks realized the importance of golf, despite its limited appeal and low ratings, the demographics were important because the folks that watch golf had a lot of disposable income which advertisers wanted to be a part of.
In 1978 when the Tour saw this they attempted to drastically raise the price, which ABC balked at and dropped out of golf. Between 1978 and 1986 they just did the three majors and counter programmed NBA basketball against the PGA Tour, which really hurt the growth of golf. But in 1987 they got back into PGA Tour golf and over the following years television golf and the PGA Tour grew. Again the ratings were never great, but the networks were able to thrive with a lot of advertising money and by the mid-90s when other major sports escalated their fees to the point that a profit became impossible for the networks, the opposite happened as networks always made money in golf.
In exploring the makeup of sports television, the fact is the networks lose money televising events like the NFL and Major League Baseball. These sports have a big appeal and help the networks with their prime-time schedule. When Fox became a network in the early 90s, they didn't have a powerful prime-time schedule but spent millions on football and baseball, which helped attract people to prime time. It was the same with ABC, for years Monday Night Football lost millions of dollars a year, the last couple of years that figure was around 100 million dollars, but the high ratings helped their overall ratings and overall bottom line. With an improvement in their schedule, Disney, which owns ABC and ESPN, felt that the help they got in the ratings didn't warrant all of the money that was lost and to help the position of ESPN moved it over to them. Yes, they are going to lose a lot of money on Monday Night Football but the prestige helps the overall prestige of ESPN and makes the loss worthwhile.
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Unfortunely, the same can't be said for golf. Even with Tiger Woods in a show there is no "prime-time" appeal for golf, as a matter of fact the appeal of golf has never been on the same level as football, baseball or basketball. That is the reason there are no more Shootout at the Bridges or other Tiger Woods prime-time specials, they can't be sold in prime time.
This is a problem that Tim Finchem, commissioner of the PGA Tour, never seems to understand. Just a couple of years ago, Finchem told members of the media that he thought that golf could compete against other sports like the NFL, but the last couple of years have proven that golf can't compete head to head with the NFL.
In a way he was broadsided with the Tiger Woods factor. That was the reason for the popularity of the PGA Tour, the networks loved Woods. When Finchem became commissioner in 1994, golf was making money on their TV properties, but nothing to the degree that other sports made. With the advent of Tiger Woods and his first eight starts in 1996, things seriously changed.
Woods was a big highlight for not only golf but the networks. ESPN was just coming into its own back then and starting to command big, cult audiences that watched anything on the network that was sports. So when Woods won in Las Vegas and then at Disney World with ESPN covering it, a lot of folks got attracted to golf
The three main networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS also saw the type of money that Woods was able to bring in with advertisers. The landscape of golf ratings changed dramatically in 1997 when Woods won the Masters by a record 12 shots. During the final round the national rating was a 14.1 and the two-day national numbers was a 11.2, at the time the largest in the history of the Masters and the biggest in the era of cable television (post 1980s). Of course it wasn't the highest television ratings in golf, in the 70s and before the advent of cable, ratings in the 15 to 20 range were achieved, but there really wasn't anything else to watch. The advent of cable and a big choice in watching habits made the 1997 Masters ratings unbelievable.
They were also a major bonus for Finchem, who was in the process of planning how to get more money out of the networks when the contracts expired at the end of 1998. Along with Donna Orender, who ran PGA Tour productions, Finchem's team worked hard to get the best possible contract from the networks and in the summer of 1998 they meet with the Tour and rewarded them.
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In 1998, TV revenue was around $58 million, but what Finchem worked out with CBS, ABC, NBC & ESPN was an increase to $121 million in 1999 with it climbing to $162 million in 2002. With that drastic figure, purses on the PGA Tour also shot up from $96 million in 1998 to $200 million in 2002. What had happened was the networks became drunken sailors that wanted to spend and they did. The reason was Tiger Woods and his 14.1 rating at the Masters. Since he was just 22 and a good drawer of adults in the 20 to 45 age bracket the feeling was that there was no the limit for the PGA Tour and Finchem played it all the way to the bank. I will never forget what happened right before the start of the PGA Tour season in 1999. At the time I was an Associate Producer for ABC Sports and we were all called up to the hallowed halls of ABC headquarters in New York. Every production person and all the announcers had to come; it was deemed so important that Peter Alliss flew in from London on the Concorde.
The meeting was with the president of ABC Sports, who at the time was Steve Bornstein. We all gathered in the executive boardroom at ABC and I will never forget his words. Bornstein wasn't a big golf fan and he expressed some doubts on the contract that he was a part of getting. As he told us all, we were on the eve of ABC losing money for the first time in golf and he wasn't happy at the prospects. It was another taste that we had in the downfall of golf at ABC.
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We had seen this before. In 1986, ABC was sold and Dennis Swanson took over as the head of ABC Sports. Swanson was very committed to ABC but his agenda was to make sure that everything, with the except of Monday Night Football, made money. After Swanson took over, ABC lost first the Ryder Cup, then the PGA Championship, and then the U.S. Open. What made the loss of the U.S. Open more stunning was the fact that when negotiations first began in 1993, the USGA made every effort to try and continue the relationship with ABC that started in 1966. In the beginning all ABC had to do was to re-sign for $8 million, about a million more than the previous contract. But Swanson wanted a decrease in the fee, which in a way got the USGA a bit upset. In the months of negotiations it seemed like a stalemate, then the USGA forged a very smart relationship with Dick Ebersol, president of NBC Sports.
So instead of getting the USGA contract at a bargain basement fee of just $8 million, Swanson found himself in an auction for the rights. He swore that it was impossible for ABC to make a profit for any figure over $8 million, but things got out of hand. The USGA put the contract up to open bidding, Swanson and ABC upped the bid to $11 million but watched NBC bid $14 million. It is said that when the bids were opened by USGA Executive Director David Fay, he was shocked at how high the bid was. So just like that, Swanson was responsible for losing his second major plus the Ryder Cup, which just happened to turn into a gem for NBC. If you ask NBC today, they will say that their USGA relationship is one of the most important ones for their sports department.
Bornstein wasn't president of ABC for long and didn't make it through the first year of the Tour contract in 1999 but he was wrong about profits. ABC Sports still made money with golf. So when the contracts came up for renewal in 2001, president of ABC Sports Howard Katz went into the negotiations with the thought of adding even more golf. Again the time to renew the contracts with the Tour couldn't have come at a better time for the Tour. Tiger Woods was winning a lot; he had just won the Masters in 2001 for his fourth straight major win. The forecast was for Woods to continue his winning ways and golf becoming even bigger. USA was very excited about the prospect, to the point that they gave the PGA Tour an unheard of high figure for covering Thursday and Friday golf. On top of that, they would finance a one-hour highlight show on Sunday morning with PGA Tour productions putting it together. They also agreed to show every non-weekend telecast of every PGA Tour event, something that ESPN didn't want.
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But for Katz the negotiations didn't achieve a goal that he was looking for. He wanted ABC to be able to cover most of the west coast swing, Florida events, and tournaments before the summer but they were already spoken for by CBS and NBC. All Katz was getting was the same stuff that he had the previous four years (which included three of the four World Golf Championships), but this time he didn't want to take any of the fall golf. It was a financial loser in the previous years and even though ABC didn't have NFL football on Sunday like NBC and CBS had it he still didn't want it.
This became a big problem for Finchem because no network wanted the fall golf package. The only ones interested were the Golf Channel, who Finchem disregarded as a non-player at that time, and USA, but he wanted network coverage. Finchem took one final stab with a last minute plea to Howard Katz. He asked him to cover the fall swing and in return gave him the Nissan Open. Katz wanted more, he wanted the Nissan and the AT&T but Finchem wouldn't give it to him. After Katz passed, Finchem sweetened the pot as he gave them the Nissan, plus the Buick Invitational for a year and the Phoenix Open for a year. With this and the Bob Hope, which it previously covered, Katz agreed and this became the biggest albatross for ABC in the coming years.
Another disadvantage for the networks that Finchem put into those contracts was that sponsor items during the show wouldn't be allowed. In a way this was done because ABC worked out a great deal with Unisys to get some nice money for putting on some technology that Unisys had in the wind stick. This deal and some others were money winners for ABC but in the new contract they weren't allowed.
Finchem got the contract signed, sealed and delivered in July, 2001 just two months before the 9/11 attacks and a year before Tiger Woods talked himself into redoing his swing. With the devastation on that sad day in United States history, advertising also went drastically down which hurt all the networks.
Katz wasn't around at ABC when the new contract took effect in 2003. George Bodenheimer and the folks at ESPN got control of ABC Sports and were in the early stages of dismantling the network and turning it into another ESPN outlet. No longer was ABC in control of things and the folks that ran ESPN were not very golf savvy. They were great at doing things like Sports Center and other sports like football, basketball, horse racing, auto racing, but for golf they didn't know the differences between a bogey or a birdie and sales wise weren't very creative in finding new ways of getting advertising in golf. They were responsible for ESPN losing the early rounds of the PGA Championship and the British Open because they never realized the importance of those events and couldn't figure out how to sell them. They did go through hoops in trying to regain the USGA contract and gain the Masters. But the bottom line for them is that it had to make money or be big like the Masters or the U.S. Open for them to bother with it. This thinking carried over into 2003 and helped create the loss of golf.
