Elling On TGC's New Look

Wednesday

03Jan

Wait, I meant GOLF CHANNEL, not TGC or even GC. My apologies to the brand.

Anyway, Steve Elling shares a few eye opening numbers in looking at The Golf...dammit, there I go again...in looking at GOLF CHANNEL's...wait, is the apostrophe s in caps too? Ah whatever. Here's what he wrote.

The undisputed heavyweight king of cable sports, ESPN is carried in 92 million homes while the Golf Channel logs in at 75 million. However, those numbers don't represent much other than unfulfilled potential if nobody is watching.

According to Nielsen Media Research, the average number of people who watched the Golf Channel at any moment in a 24-hour broadcast day during the 2006 fall season was a minuscule 44,000 people -- the approximate population of Titusville -- or 1.1 million fewer people below ESPN's average in the same time frame.

Actually, more stunning was this chart buried at the end of his piece...

Network    Sport    Avg. viewers
ESPN    Multiple    1,153,000
ESPN2    Multiple    324,000
NFL Network    Pro football    119,000
Speed Channel    Auto racing    117,000
Versus    Pro hockey    75,000
ESPN Classic    Sports history    66,000
ESPN News    Sports news    62,000
Golf Channel    Golf coverage    44,000

That's right, more people are watching ESPN News and ESPN Classic and bloody hockey on the network formerly known as Outdoor Life.

This also was a surprise....

Industry observers anticipated sweeping personnel changes when the contract was announced, but the staffing has mostly been handled in-house. McGuire estimated that the company only added a half-dozen employees to its overall payroll, bringing the total to around 385, but some of the names were crucial additions. Leading the way was the addition of six-time major champion Nick Faldo, who after two well received years at ESPN/ABC, will serve as lead analyst.

Only six new staffers?

Whoa.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007 at 08:59 AM

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Reader Comments (22)

I think you are comparing apples to oranges here. How many people do you think watch the hours of infomercials that the Golf Channel has on for much of the day? Could they be pulling down the average at little?

What are the numbers for ESPN when they cover Golf vs Monday Night Football?

The Golf Channel will never have the numbers that ESPN or ESPN 2 have because they appeal to a small portion of the population. That same portion will watch golf on ESPN or the Golf Channel. Perhaps a few more would watch on ESPN just because they would come across it accidentally.

01.3.2007 |

JohnV

As someone who dumped his cable because he spent way, way too much time watching those stupid infomercials, I can honestly say that I've actually enjoyed reading instead of getting home from work and watching mindless drivel on television. I figure I can depend on my fellow bloggers on this site to keep me apprised on how Nick and Kelly are getting on. . . I frankly don't buy how these networks calculate their "ratings" anyway.

01.3.2007 |

Smolmania

6 New Staffers and three cameras. ha

01.3.2007 |

adam c

I'm shocked at how many people on average are watching TGC at any given time (44,000).

I had thought the number was at least 50,000. LOL

Let's do the math:

That breaks down to less than 1,000 per each of the 50 states -- actually, 880 viewers per state. Or based on the 75 million homes it enters, at any given time 0.00005 percent of the potential audience is watching TGC.

That's awful when you consider there are what -- 26 to 35 million golfers? That's less than one per cable TV household.

Mind-boggling, ain't it?

01.3.2007 |

Four-putt

Holy Cow - I realized I am personally driving Golf Channel ratings. I have one of those rating boxes and have been told I represent 23,000 people.

I think I should buy stock!!

01.3.2007 |

Brad F

great idea Brad, then you could get 25 of your friends to get 25 of their friends that would be able to get 25 more and so on and so on, of course what this tells me is golf has become so boring to watch that even avid golfers aren't watching anymore.

01.3.2007 |

Chris

All this build up and then we get Mike Ritz all over the season opener Golf Central. How is that guy on TV?

01.3.2007 |

The live telecasts from the PGA Tour we get over here in Northern Europe ususally look like this: Two minutes spent watching a leaderboard, three minutes watching an out-of-focus waterfall (or, in Phoenix, an out-of-focus cactus), two minutes watching an international player out of contention botching up a hole, one more minute watching an unchanged leaderboard, THEN we may get a couple of minutes of taped action from nothing but the top three players on the all-to-familiar leaderboard. Then fast back to the damn waterfall again. Question: What on earth are you getting when we get leaderboards and "scenic" material? If it's not considerably more riveting, then little wonder your ratings are dipping. What's wrong with showing actual golf during a golf telecast?

P.S. To answer your question: No, I no longer subscribe to the channel televising PGA Tour action. It is every bit as nauseating as it sounds.

01.4.2007 |

Hawkeye

Chris, that explains why 5 personel and 3 camera hirings, nobody's watching!

01.4.2007 |

RGT

Hakweye-we're getting commercials.

01.4.2007 |

dandruff

I have to agree with hawkeye; the BBC coverage here, (and we get 11 hours of non-commercial coverage per day at the Open) is jsut shot after shot - it would be interesting to get stats on 'shots shown' per hour for the various networks. And aside from a 2 minute interview per hour, not much else gets in the way, except the 2 hour staff turnover which gives the incoming guy a chance to give us his overview then carry on. What is good is that the have interactive TV over here, so you can watch the main telecast, or select from 3 other views, usually following Tiger or Ernie around the course. These tend to have fewer shots per hour.

01.4.2007 |

Tim Robinson

Thursday of the PGA we arrived at the Portmarnock Links Hotel as about 6:45 pm (after our round at County Down), checked in, and sat in the bar watching Sky TV's live broadcast. We saw golf shot after golf shot, and had Butch Harmon ripping players left and right. Coming home on Sunday to watch the replay of the final round, back on CBS, was very depressing.

01.4.2007 |

Smolmania

Hate to admit it, but ever since I got a TiVo box last Christmas, I now know that "golf coverage" is really an endless stream of commercials, interspersed with shots of leaderboards or leaderboard graphics, "analysts" pontificating about shots, an occasional cutaway to "the amazing sand save" shot as referred to in those PlayGolfAmerica commercials, several PlayGolfAmerica commercials, people sinking two foot tap-in putts followed by their scorecard, and then the gratuitous "bumper shot" of the out of focus flower/tree/cactus/waterfall, depending on the locale...
I LOVE playing golf, but watching it in real-time is a TOTAL waste of time - thanks to DVR technology, I can compress a three hour golf telecast into about 20 minutes...
Depressing....
LPGA coverage is even WORSE - you don't even get to see the drive or the flight of the ball over there - it's just putting, putting, putting.....
REALLY depressing...

01.4.2007 |

Scott

Tutsville, Smuttsville, this DEAL smells rotten.

01.4.2007 |

R. Thompson

Another interesting problem that The Golf Channel will experience in Canada is that we are only able to get the network by purchasing a digital cable box, and paying extra for the bundle that includes their service.
The ability of the average channel surfer to come across and watch any Thursday or Friday golf is gone.
Also, with the demise of the Canadian Open (it ain't dead yet, but the week after the British... seriously) I would suggest that we're hurtin' up here. Lots of great golf courses in Canada, but terrible coverage and accessibility. How do you grow the game that way?

01.4.2007 |

Andrew

Andrew, how would you feel about the Canadian Open becoming a European Tour event, the week ater the US Open? As a European UBC alumni, I would surely love to have you!
Glad, in a way, to get the response I got to my post - clearly, the networks aren't getting proper feedback from the viewers who actually know the game. One of the biggest problems with only showing live shots from the leaders and relying on taped coverage of everything else is that whenever a shot of someone slightly out of contention comes up, you know before the shot that it's going to be good. That takes away the surprise effect as well as the suspense effect, both of which are important aspects of making anything exciting. The most exciting single shot I can remember watching was Paul Azinger's ace in the 1988 PGA Championship (I was twelve, and had never witnessed a hole-in-one before) - he was in the lead, and we got the whole pre-shot routine complete with Jack Whitaker's, Dave Marr's and Jim McKay's interplay before and during the shot (How 'bout a one, HOW 'BOUT A ONE!!!). It was a far cry from the "this was just moments ago"-intro, which tells us that something out of the ordinary is about to happen, and leaves us numb and indifferent.

01.4.2007 |

Hawkeye

...make that "alumnus"!

01.4.2007 |

Hawkeye

As JohnV wrote, the comparison is apples to oranges.

While the difference may indeed be great, we won't really know until we have data for the events covered by TGC. Those can then be compared with past coverage on ESPN/USA/TNT.

01.4.2007 |

GeorgeM

+1 for Andrew's post. The TOUR blithely negotiated Thurday Friday broadcast rights North America wide with no recognition or understanding that the GOLF CHANNEL was moving to speciality channel status in the major Canadian markets. The GOLF CHANNEL (enough with the all caps, already) then held TSN (sort of a Canadian ESPN) hostage on the idea of licensing early round coverage of The Canadian Open and TSN balked.
How this serves the Tour's 'brand' is beyond me. It seems designed to ensure there won't be a single new convert to the game, spectator wise.

01.4.2007 |

DBH

Thanks to Geoff for the numbers. I'd been told that GC was losing viewers, but I didn't know it was that bad.

Leads me to believe that the PGAT contract is likely a last gasp for GC.

I trust Eldrick's judgement. It's only the majors that are worth recording for later viewing.

01.6.2007 |

Van

I agree about the boring coverage and the necessity of TiVO/DVR. You have to ask what the Tour(s) and the Golf Channel does well -- not much IMHO. The problem is the marketing types drive the presentation of the events, and by and large the golf they play is not community or club golf, but resort/business entertainment golf.

01.7.2007 |

F. X.

You should be fortunate that Golf Channel is still out there. ABC, CBS, and NBC don't show golf as much until Tiger Woods or the top names comes on. This channel does a good job spotlighting the lesser known names as well as Tiger and the top names. It's gotten better over the years with its coverage. I like the post tournament shows that they do with their analysts.

12.29.2007 |

Preston

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