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With the new contract kicking in, all the networks took a bath on golf. In 2003, ABC finally didn't make money in golf for a year and reports of losses of $50 million for all the networks involved brought things to a head. For USA, they knew right off the bat that the deal was bad when it was realized that ratings for reruns of Law and Order were better and they didn't have to pay a big fee to air those shows. The PGA Tour Sunday show was also a problem. I will never forget Kevin Landy, who then was Executive Producer of golf on USA going crazy with the way PGA Tour Productions was doing those shows. It was more like a one-hour PR job for the Tour instead of a show on golf. It took Landy over a year of patience and work before he molded that show into the great hour that it is now.
Over at ABC new management, which didn't know much about golf, came in and right off the bat replaced producer Jack Graham. This set in motion a major change in which most of the production crew was replaced and new announcers were brought in. In October of 2003, young wiz kid Mark Loomis was made the producer of golf and his mission was to make ABC golf better and different than it was before, which in the minds of the geniuses at ESPN/ABC would help increase the ratings and help eliminate the financial losses of golf. In the first week of being on the job, Loomis went down to Florida and met with Paul Azinger to get him as an announcer but Azinger turned him down flat. When the new golf year started in 2004, Loomis was doing what he was told, change what ABC was doing, and after a few shows Curtis Strange didn't like the direction and quit. This forced Loomis to really do something to fix it, his choices of Hal Sutton and Corey Pavin weren't working out. In a way, Loomis got a bit of luck. Things weren't going in the right direction for ABC, but the same was happening to Paul Azinger's golf game, so after Loomis again approached him about doing golf for ABC he agreed to do a couple over the summer.
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Even with the winning announce team golf still lost money at ABC, with the prime reason being fall golf. It got so bad that after the 2004 season one high-ranking official for ESPN/ABC Sports, Mark Shapiro, told other high level people at Disney and ABC that golf was finished at both ESPN and ABC, they wouldn't be a part of the upcoming negotiations.
While all of that was happening, Finchem realized the problem that he had not only with ABC, ESPN, and USA, but also NBC who wasn't happy with their losses. Instead of holding negotiations in the summer of 2005, Finchem put them off as he looked for a solution to the problem. That is how the FedEx Cup series was born. In a way, Finchem really didn't solve the networks problems of big losses, he created another big series that would interest the networks at the end of the year and shorten the season to September, thus avoiding the embarrassment all the networks saying no to fall golf. Finchem also got a break when in the summer of '05 Shapiro left ABC to go work with Dan Synder and Six Flags. This sparked the interest of golf as Disney OK'd ABC/ESPN to pursue golf. So it looked like ABC/ESPN was back in the picture when the negotiations started. But things didn't go very well, the people that did the negations for ABC/ESPN were told to make sure not to bring more losses and a combination of a low bid and the PGA Tour not giving ABC anything that they wanted made it very easy for the ABC/ESPN negotiators to walk. That happened, leaving the tour with no option but get the best possible deal with whoever was left.
To this day it's a bit of a mystery why the ABC/ESPN folks walked so early. Sources with the Tour told some quietly that ABC/ESPN just didn't know how to sell golf and gave a very low first bid. Over at ABC/ESPN, insiders said that things were already worked out to give NBC and CBS the plums, leaving ABC with the undesirable events at a big cost. Again, the truth on all this is someplace in the middle.
The one thing about Tim Finchem is that he is very good at making money for the Tour. Some have said that Finchem does it with Tour "partners" but question the way Finchem uses that word. As one executive at ABC said to me, "In Finchem's vocabulary 'partners' means nothing more than the Tour making money and letting the other person"partner" scramble around to make a buck, and when they don't the company quietly disappears into the sunset." This became true with ABC, ESPN, USA, and Sky Sports, they just didn't like what the future would bring and quietly left.
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This left Finchem with just NBC and CBS, who worked out a deal to their satisfaction. In a way ABC/ESPN leaving made things a lot easier for the Tour because all of the plumes didn't have to be split three ways. No money figures have leaked out, it's assumed that Finchem got a bit more but with the contracts stretching over six years instead of four nobody really knows what happened except for a select few who are guarding the numbers like Coke guards the formula for their drink.
Now this leaves us with Golf Channel, which was in the right place at the right time. Nobody wanted the Thursday/Friday events, so that left the tour with little recourse than deal with just the Golf Channel. Again nobody knows the facts about the deal, but the Golf Channel got a 15-year agreement. This shocked everyone and brings speculation on a number of items that could have happened. One is that the Tour gets some kind of ownership stake in the Golf Channel, the other is that the Tour along with Comsat, which owns the Golf Channel, could start up another network down the road to put all PGA Tour golf on an NFL Network type of channel. One day the truth will come out, but this brings the question if the Golf Channel will help the Tour or hinder the growth like the CNBC deal did.
One thing for the success of the arraignment is that every major golf nut loves the Golf Channel and this deal makes them very happy. But will this help grow golf in the future and bring others into the fold? The big thing about having golf on ESPN or USA is the amount of people that watch those networks. Since the draw is much larger, with only only a small percent of golf nuts, it's been a great vehicle to introduce people into golf and get them involved in the the PGA Tour. That is something that won't happen at Golf Channel; the growth of new people will be slow and you won't have a non-golf fan watching, so this could be a problem.
As for production values over at Golf Channel, they are high but at this time not on the same level as a ABC, NBC or CBS. In 2007, they will be responsible for almost a dozen telecasts and to make sure that they get first-class shows in the first three weeks they have gone to a couple of hired guns, Andy Young and Steve Beim, for some help. Both have done a lot of golf events for ESPN, and the PGA Tour can be comfortable with them. Supposedly Young's role is a bit strange; he will sit behind Golf Channel's producer Keith Hirshland and help him. Meanwhile, Beim will be the director of the show. This just shows the paranoia management at the Golf Channel has to avoid any bad reviews. What is interesting about the Young and the Beim hiring, both are experienced and capable producers and directors but questions could surface about Beim in the wake of his firing by both ABC/ESPN and a separate production company.
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The choice of Beim is also puzzling because Golf Channel has a very good and capable director in Emmett Loughran, who has 15 years of experience doing nothing but directing golf and doesn't carry the baggage that Beim has.
Adding to all of this is the fact that Golf Channel has also hired ABC producer Brandt Packer to do all of the Champions Tour events in 2007. This is a great choice since Packer, only the seventh golf producer in the 45 years that ABC had golf, did a great job as the ABC producer on big shows like the British Open, the American Express, and the Tour Championship. He is also a good friend of Nick Faldo and has worked a lot with him, so you would have thought that they would have been comfortable to have Packer guide Faldo and their PGA Tour golf coverage. Also Packer is media friendly and has gotten good write ups in papers like the USA Today. So the logical answer should have been to let him produce those shows while Hirshland sits back and helps guide Packer through the maze of problems. Hirshland could also help give a favorable slant to the media on what a great job the Golf Channel would be doing, especially since some of the media will have fingers awaiting to write any kind of problems. But Golf Channel, in a classic case of ego and office politics, is making what I think a wrong move at the wrong time for their most important show in their history.
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Still, there are some positives in all of this, they have a fine team of announcers and in the long run good commentators is the most important aspect of the show. Along with Faldo, there will be Peter Oosterhuis, Dottie Pepper, Mark Rolfing, and Kelly Tilghman, who will host the show. The choice of Tilghman is a gamble, she has been a star for them, but hosting a major golf telecast and being the perfect traffic cop will require a lot of work, patience, and knowledge on her part. Still in all, their choice on Tilghman was the best and will be a good gamble.
As for Faldo, ABC's demise became a blessing for him. He not only was retained by ABC for the British Open but will also host most of Golf Channel's live shows and replaces Lanny Wadkins as the main analyst at CBS. It will be very interesting how this choice goes over. I feel Faldo could have problems finding his stride in all of this, realistically this is the first time that he won't have Paul Azinger to bounce off of. In a way, the two of them were like Abbott and Costello. Unfortunately when you take away Costello, Abbott may not be that great. It will also be interesting to see how Faldo will get along with CBS funny men Gary McCord and David Feherty. Will there be any room for Faldo to be funny during the show, and will he bounce off of those two and Jim Nantz like he did with Tirico and Azinger? One big pitfall that Faldo needs to avoid is being too dry and serious, comparing situations that others have on the course to what he experienced as a player. This is what made Jack Nicklaus so boring when he worked at ABC a decade ago.
Last but not least, it doesn't matter to us in the United States but Sky Sports in the United Kingdom also is leaving the PGA Tour scene. What happened to them was a new company called Setanta came in and offered the PGA Tour $200 million over the course of six years for not only Tour events but Champions and Nationwide events. This was about six times what Sky was paying, so for the tour the answer was easy.
Still, there are some pitfalls that the tour never looked at through all of the dollar signs. First is the fact that when the deal was made over the summer, Setanta didn't have the clearance that Sky Sports has. Already people pay a monthy fee for Sky, the question will be if people will pay for Sky that still has all the World Golf Championships, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship, and the Ryder Cup. Or will they switch over to Setanta, whose marquee event will be the Players Championship and FedEx Cup playoffs. Will people get turned off at having to pay two subscriptions to watch golf? More importantly, how much will a start up subscription service do? Will people stop watching and caring about golf in the United Kingdom with this deal?
All of this will be interesting to watch. There is a saying that "change is good." At the PGA Tour, they are betting the franchise that this slogan comes true for them starting in 2007.
As for the crew of the final ABC telecast and the PGA Tour Sunday show, it was a sad departure as many of the folks that were on those shows for years will have to spend the holiday season hunting up work for 2007.
