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The second of two big golf tournaments with limited commercial interruptions has been played and NBC showed an astounding number of shots during Sunday's thrilling 2015 Players finale.
It's entirely possible Fox Sports may limit themselves to four breaks/six minutes of commercials an hour (or less) at the U.S. Open (as previous partner NBC did), but I've yet to hear any announced plans for a Masters or Players-like presentation. And we already (sadly) know how The Open Championship and PGA Championship play out commercial-wise.
ClassicSportsTV.com tracked the shots from Sunday's Players and reports...
I tracked the televised strokes by player during the NBC airing of the final round of the Players Championship. NBC showed 381 regulation strokes from the Sunday round. The telecast began at 2pm ET and regulation play ended at 6:48, so this worked out to 1.32 strokes per minute - the highest average of the six events I have tracked.
Also worth noting: winner Rickie Fowler only accounted for 12 of the regulation shots (all of his playoff shots were seen, but not included in the above summary).
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/Fox's Joe Buck talked about the first golf telecast last year from Fox Sports, which seems a bit more confident than the admirable "we're not worthy" homage paid to the other networks when kicking off last fall's Franklin Templeton Shootout.
Talking to Craig Hill of The New Tribune:
“Believe me, everybody was watching us — especially the networks that cover golf — and wondering what they were going to get from golf on Fox,” Buck said. “And I would submit to you that they came away really disappointed because it sounded like golf and it looked like golf.”
Buck said Shanks addressed the crew afterward and said, “That was the best launch of a sport we’ve had at this network.”
Fresh and innovative is the bar set for Fox by the USGA, which kicks off with the U.S. Four-Ball Championship in less than two weeks. Buck should probably leave the tech talk to Mark Loomis, the supervising producer whose team will inevitably deliver some fun stuff either this year or more likely, over the next few years.
Buck is excited to try new ways of covering golf, too. Fox Sports wants to use drones at Chambers Bay (it is awaiting Federal Aviation Administration approval), plans to have a leaderboard constantly displayed on the screen, is experimenting with cameras and angles in hopes of giving viewers a better idea of how the course plays and will use graphics to better show the contours of the greens.
Buck says Fox is also looking for ways to add more natural sound (including golfers’ conversations with caddies) to the telecast. It is sound he says he’ll be careful to not talk over.
And on some broadcast teams, that would be fresh and innovative!
