Jay Monahan's vision for the future of golf television began to take shape when he competed in the DP World Tour's Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.
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Golf fans want change.
golf fan need Change.
And TV? Television is a great place to start.
For years, fans have fretted about the current state of golf broadcasts. What's the reason? A series of conflicting (but equally important) offenses aimed at golf audiences. Depending on who you ask, the coverage was too slow and failed to capture enough golf content, or it moved too fast and focused more on a string of golf shots than a compelling narrative. Coverage is too broad – showing too many stories but not enough content relevant Those – or it's too narrow to show more than the leader. about the only thing Everyone It can be agreed that they are unhappy…and they see too many ads.
The PGA Tour is trying to bring about change this fall with a new TV-focused pilot program. The show, which will air during Friday afternoon Golf Channel telecasts throughout the fall season, is designed to trial a number of potential changes to improve the fan viewing experience.
We got our first look at the changes outlined by Golf Channel last week at the Sanderson Farms Championship, with more expected to come in the coming weeks. Below, we've rounded up three of the ones we've seen so far that we think you'll be most likely to notice.
1. Expand player interviews
Walk-and-talk is one of the most heralded innovations among golf broadcasters over the past five years, and for good reason. After CBS convinced Augusta National to do an interview during the '23 Masters, the technology appears to be becoming a staple of our weekly golf viewing lives.
It turns out that this statement is only half true, and as time goes by, fewer and fewer big-name players choose to be interviewed. This fall, Golf Channel and the PGA Tour aim to resume interviews by expanding the scope of player interview settings to allow “designated interviewers” to approach players on the course.
The bigger question remains what these interviews will do for domestic audiences. (After a dispute with Mackenzie Hughes over a Q&A during the Genesis Invitational in February, the PGA Tour stipulated in a memo that players would only be asked about developments on the course and that interviews would be entirely voluntary ) The strategy to expand to more closely represent Sky Sports' DP World Tour coverage will be welcomed by fans.
2. Outdated tangent strategies
For years, the PGA Tour and its broadcast partners have used an outdated “projected cut line” system based on Friday round scores, even as analytical methods that more accurately guess probabilistic cut lines have become increasingly popular.
At Sanderson Farms, though, Golf Channel tried an analytics-focused approach to predicting yields. The network also changed its coverage and graphics to focus more fully on players struggling for the weekend, even staying live into the evening until the cut was finalized.
The changes represent a small but meaningful shift in the Tour's Friday afternoon coverage and a new answer to years of questions surrounding how to handle low Friday night ratings.
3. Narrow focus
We could argue whether Golf Channel's “closest to the clubs” focus on the 13th course at Sanderson Farms ultimately increased the network's reach. (General social media dismay over the network's sound effects/”go for it” graphics suggests the opposite.) But a broader strategy of intensifying focus on a specific hole or series of holes in the early rounds seems reasonable, Especially when predicting the future head to some of the Tour's more famous destinations like TPC Sawgrass or the Riviera.
The idea may not end up being retained by Golf Channel for long, but with coverage of the Black Desert Championship moving to Utah for the more visually appealing tournament host's first event, the strategy may look a little more reasonable.
1 change that will not be tested
The biggest change golf fans are seeking — fewer commercials — is unlikely to appear on Friday telecasts of PGA Tour events this fall. There are many reasons for this, and few: The PGA Tour has signed a broadcast rights agreement that requires a certain number of commercials to be aired during each television broadcast.
While in theory, having fewer tournaments and disrupting lives would be a good thing, we're unlikely to see those goals happen until at least the end of the decade, when the Tour's latest tranche of broadcast rights deals with NBC and CBS expire Any meaningful change.
The good news is that networks like CBS have shown us that improving the quality of golf telecasts is possible within the confines of the Tour's business structure. The bad news is, for fans hoping to see the future of golf TV, well, More golfthese improvements will have to wait.
