Francesa Rant Fox's U.S. Open Telecast: “They’re in kindergarten. The other guys are in graduate school.”

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While collecting a few thoughts on Fox Sport's golf debut, it's clear there is not enough time to go through all of the issues.

But Mike Francesa's rant about sums things up on the telecast side of things for me, particularly his fuming about the split screen of Jason Day walking as Rory McIlroy was making a huge charge. I'm not sure if they were hoping to see if Day could survive the walk from 3 to 4, or maybe a button was stuck in the truck, but it was a low point of the day right after the missing blimp views of shots at 18 or the lack of a Jordan Spieth cam in scoring as he watched Dustin Johnson's tournament winning three-putt.

Here's Francesa:

Fox Sports Off To Strong U.S. Open Ratings Start

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An excellent start over a very long day on Fox Sports no doubt learning to love these west coast venues.

Here goes, with comparisons to 2012, the last time the U.S. Open was played in the Pacific Time Zone.

Fox (Network), 8-11 PM ET: 2.4/4

Up 71% from NBC in 2014. In 2012 at Olympic Club, NBC drew a 2.07.

Fox Sports 1

U.S. Open Noon-8 pm ET: 1.28

That's up 20% from last year’s comparable first round coverage on ESPN (1.07), down from 2012 at Olympic when ESPN drew a 1.6.

Fox Sports Begins U.S. Open Coverage On Time, Telecast Also Mercifully Comes To An End

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Just focusing on the positive!

The initial foray into golf broadcasting for Fox Sports was the mess you'd expect when a network is essentially debuting a new broadcast team during a Super Bowl spread out over several hundred acres.

Much of the telecast sparingly used the innovations predicted or even could muster up basic graphics showing a player's name and score, elements we've come to expect in the 21st century. There were many ill-timed pre-packaged features or studio visits as key players were on the course. Yes, those players were at least viewable on the mostly good Featured Group and Featured Hole coverage, but after NBC's approach to the U.S. Open, the change was jarring.

A full-page leaderboard meltdown for a few early hours, later chalked up to a "global" issue by lead announcer Joe Buck even as scoring worked everywhere else on the property. Gaps in sound for surprisingly long periods were embarrassing and detracted by a strong effort on the sound side of the telecast.

These hiccups were to be expected.

What wasn't expected: the narrow focus on name players and almost complete disregard for so many of the qualifiers who make the U.S. Open different than any other American event. They will be criticized for over-covering Tiger Woods, but the way in which he shot 80 warranted the attention he received. There was a brief interest in 15-year-old Cole Hammer with a package of Hammer fending off questions to make us all feel old. It was cute, but not as fun as seeing shots played at the wild and wacky Chambers Bay, even if they were by people we don't know. One would think the USGA should be about telling the stories of not just the stars, but also core golfers who are getting a rare shot at history.

In defense of the cameramen, who lost a few balls in the air, it's very difficult to see a ball out here. The combination of gray skies and off-color turf is the culprit.

There were certainly some fun shots from the Chase Cam (Chase Car once to Greg Norman), though the ones trying to show green contours seemed rushed.

The announcing was a mixed bag, with good energy and tone early on from all, but the long day appeared to catch up to the crew (though Norman offered some pointed analysis of Tiger late in the day before Joe Buck and Norman hit a wall and sounded exhausted). Curt Menifee seems totally out of his element, and maybe not even aware players don't get to choose their own tee times.

The fear of upsetting the USGA appears to be influencing the commentary, as the normally unrestrained Tom Weiskopf made a strong effort to hide his disdain for the course, only to not fool many viewers. Faxon and Flesch sounded comfortable and authoritative, as did Gil Hanse in a potentially awkward role of golf architecture expert. Former USGA Executive Director David Fay seemed underutilized after a briefly window with Tom Weiskopf, Buck and Norman. Charles Davis is yet another inexplicably bad interviewer while Holly Sonders seems woefully underutilized.Though she did get a nice hug from Phil Mickelson.

Also, six minutes of current Executive Director Mike Davis on camera talking about the course setup, while Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy were in key portions of their round, only fuels the perception that Fox is efforting to appease their broadcast partners at the expense of viewers.

Stay tuned for other reviews. In the meantime, one of the more adorable mistakes:


BBC Ready To Give Up Open Championship Coverage

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Ewan Murray reports the inevitable: BBC will be ready to give up their Open Championship rights after this year's edition at St. Andrews.

Sky Sports takes over UK coverage in 2017.  The news left BBC as a two-year lameduck.

The rights to American coverage are currently held by ESPN, but those rights beyond 2017 are due to be decided any day.

Fox Baseball Viewers Just Love Hearing About The U.S. Open

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I'm not sure bringing a a USGA President into the booth of an MLB game with his searsucker and hurling his "Jr." designation is the way to cool-up the U.S. Open's move to Fox, but then there I go again thinking this is about the golf instead of branding the USGA!

Sure, Brad Faxon, who loves his Red Sox and could do baseball banter with the announcers while promoting the upcoming debut telecast from Chambers Bay would have been the logical choice. But Brad's not on the Executive Committee and just months from becoming even more irrelevant than ever!

I can't embed the full response because of Squarespace's inability to fix Twitter issues and I'm limited in the number of obscenities visually available in a month, but you can view the Fox fan's reaction to having their compelling Dodgers-Cardinals game interrupted here. But here's a sampling (thanks reader Sean for spotting):

 

Rugby Dude: BBC Gave Up The Open Due To Small Audiences

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The Telegraph's Hannah Furness quotes Eddie Butler, plugging his new book as voice of The Beeb's rugby coverage, suggesting that BBC did not put up a hard fight to keep The Open Championship due to audience size.

Furness writes:

Speaking about his new book The Head of Gonzo Davies, Butler, the BBC's voice of international rugby, said: "There is a will to protect the Six Nations, which for most of my working life was not considered jewel by the BBC.

“It was something the BBC did, but rugby was a very arcane, esoteric sport which nobody really understood. Until the BBC did some market research and found ten million people watched it.

"The moment they started to take the Six Nations seriously, they've actually given it their full attention and are going to protect it as best they can.

"They're certainly going to protect it harder than they protected the Open golf, which has gone from the BBC. They didn't defend that with much vigour because not many people watched it.

"All those Sunday afternoons of the Open title being decided, across the land not many people watched it.

"But there are things the BBC will fight hard for."

The Open's rights have gone to Sky Sports, with the American rights current up for grabs in a sudden chase literally out of the blue, even though ESPN is signed through 2017.