McCord On Recent CBS Broadcasts: "I have never seen anything quite as negative...It’s not a good time."

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Note the cap.

Note the cap.

Longtime CBS golf broadcaster and pretty-good golfers, too, Gary McCord sat down to talk with Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz of the Subpar podcast.

It’s a terrific listen, but McCord’s comments on the state of CBS golf broadcasts jumped out after Peter Kostis’ recent podcast statements.

“I’m not part of it. You can kind of react to it from a position I have never had before for a long, long time. It just so happens that my former network is not doing as well as they would like with the golf broadcast at this point. I have never seen anything quite as negative as I’ve seen coming out of everywhere about what’s going on, so I have a lot of empathy. Those are my friends. I don’t want to see them fail, but they are getting blasted. It’s not a good time.”

If reports are true of—wild guess here, $8 billion 10-year TV deal announcement next week that includes CBS—they’ll have 10 years to figure it out.

On the overall state of “analysis” found on PGA Tour broadcasts of late, McCord says a lovefest is making for awful TV.

“If you go, ‘Wow, that was a great shot, and let’s go to Gary.’ ‘Oh, that was a wonderful shot, and how about that one? That was fantastic.’ Are you kidding me? You can’t have that,” McCord said. “You gotta have this ridicule. Some guys gotta jack it up and another guy has to break and you got to get those people together and get your team together and do it. And that’s what we are lacking at this point in my humble opinion.”

The full podcast:

Azinger Tries To Walk Back European Tour Slight And Sticks To His PGA Tour Partiality

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Paul Azinger’s on camera comments regarding the value of a PGA Tour win over worldwide play in Europe did not go over well with international players. The mix of the condescending remarks (on-camera) and referencing “that” tour and “all that” international golf, Azinger certainly sounded more demeaning than likely intended. Then again his walk back (bottom of this post) suggests he’s holding his ground. I love Ryder Cup years!

Here is the clip where Azinger is explaining why getting a PGA Tour win would mean so much to Tommy Fleetwood, third round leader of the 2020 Honda Classic:

Prominent players and Ryder Cuppers chimed in:

Besides the European’s recent Ryder Cup dominance, the comment also disregarded field strength in Europe, particularly in weeks when Fleetwood has won:

JuliaKate Culpepper at Golfweek received this attempt at calming the waters and Azinger isn’t budging.

Azinger told Golfweek he and Poulter exchanged multiple text messages Sunday night.

“I wasn’t trying to be malicious. I didn’t mean to disrespect anyone,” Azinger told Golfweek. “But professional golfers choke for two things: cash and prestige. And the PGA Tour has the most of both.”

The man loves his PGA Tour!

Let the Ryder Cup bickering begin!

Another Zany Honda Classic: Sungjae Im Survives For First Win, Fleetwood Says He Was Not Affected By Yelling Fan

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Say what you want about the Bear Trap—aka “The Trap”, as Dan Hicks called it this year, causing all sorts of drinking game disputes—the closing stretch at PGA National delivered again.

Sungjae Im, the 21-year-old South Korean and Korn Ferry Tour grad who plays anywhere they let him, as GolfDigest.com’s Brian Wacker reports from Palm Beach Gardens, survived after a stellar 18th hole up-and-down to edge Mackenzie Hughes, a 100-1 shot to start the day.

And hey, this Presidents Cup bump is a thing. Handicap accordingly in the coming weeks!

Im’s win came at the expense of a long-awaited Tommy Fleetwood PGA Tour victory that will have to wait another week at least after he unsuccessfully went for the 18th in two.

After the round, Fleetwood and caddie Ian Finnish said they did not hear the fan so clearly caught by NBC’s award-winning sound, reports Wacker:

NBC did not address whether the screamer could be heard by Fleetwood even as social media erupted upon hearing what seemed like potentially shot-altering noise. Either way, such fan “interaction” is certainly something to watch given the PGA Tour’s anticipated push into legalized gambling and the potential for competitive interference.

Here are the round four highlights from PGA Tour Entertainment:

Feherty On Patrick Reed: "'There is no God' was the first thing I said after he'd won last week."

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Following last week’s Patrick Reed win at the WGC Mexico, SI.com’s Ryan Asselta talked to David Feherty as he launches season ten of Feherty.

It’s a lively chat about the show and several players, but his Reed remarks stand out after working the WGC for NBC:

DF: Jesus. You can put that in there actually. Just Jesus. I mean, I don't even know what to say. It's just, it's going to follow him for the rest of his life.

SI: Obviously we know about the rules violation at the Hero in the Bahamas. We know how he handled it, claiming no wrongdoing. He was called out by Koepka last week and Peter Kostis among others. And what does he do? He goes and wins in Mexico. Is Patrick Reed the most polarizing figure in the game of golf today?

DF: I'm not even sure that he's polarizing. I'm not sure there's too many people on the other side, you know what I mean? I mean, "there is no God" was the first thing I said after he'd won last week. There is no God, you know, that's proof of it right there. Amazing. I mean, he is amazing. He's Captain Oblivious, just can let everything run off his back. I've never seen anything like it.

"Geographic consolidation": Golf Channel Relocating To Stamford In The Next Year

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Founded in Orlando by Joe Gibbs and Arnold Palmer in 1995, Golf Channel parent company NBC Sports has reportedly decided to move operations to Stamford, Connecticut over the next year:

A Golf Channel spokesman issued this statement:

“Our aim is to be as transparent as possible with our employees, therefore as we began this process we informed teams that some of our media operations will be transitioning to new locations over the next year or more. Geographic consolidation is a growing and sensible trend across the media industry, and as our business continues to evolve, we’ll continue to look for ways to operate as effectively as possible to deliver world-class coverage to our loyal audiences.”

Ratings: NASCAR, NBA, XFL Take A Chunk Out Of Tigerless WGC Mexico

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Competing for eyeballs against a suddenly resurgent NASCAR, Lakers-Celtics on ABC and the mystery that is the XFL (ESPN), not even NBC’s very enjoyable coverage of a compelling leaderboard could help the WGC Mexico Championship’s ratings.

Throw in Tiger playing this event in 2019, and the 2020 ratings were down significantly across the board according to ShowBuzzDaily’s Mitch Metcalf. This continues a trend from the West Coast swing where CBS numbers were well down according to SportsMediaWatch.com.

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2019’s numbers:

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Paulsen at SportsMediaWatch.com analyzed the final numbers this way:

Final round coverage of the PGA Tour/WGC-Mexico Championship averaged a 1.8 rating and 2.79 million viewers on NBC last Sunday, marking the lowest rating and viewership for the event — previously held in Doral, Fla. — since it debuted in 2007.

Ratings and viewership fell 18% from last year, when Tiger Woods was in the field (2.2, 3.42M) and 31% and 29% respectively from 2018 (2.6, 3.93M).

Third round action declined 37% in ratings (to 1.2) and 40% in viewership (to 1.72M). Eight straight PGA Tour windows on broadcast have declined.

Lead-in coverage on Golf Channel averaged a 0.44 (-46%) and 709,000 (-43%) on Saturday and a 0.37 (-44%) and 540,000 (-44%) on Sunday.

XFL Effect? Sunday's 2020 Genesis Ratings Plunge On CBS

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Comparing the 2019 Genesis Open with the 2020 Genesis Invitational’s numbers, it appears the golf audience tuned in like normal on Golf Channel and for Saturday’s CBS broadcast.

But Sunday’s final round featuring a strong leaderboard and compelling finish drew a 2.03 overnight according to ShowBuzzDaily.com, down significantly over 2019’s 3.0.

The loss of essentially 1.3 million 18-49 year olds is most likely attributable to a new entry on the sports TV landscape this year: XFL football. The Genesis ran up against a Dallas-LA game on ABC that drew a 1.52 overnight rating and just under a million 18-49 year olds.

The 2019 Genesis drew a 1.0 Saturday when a rain delay eliminated live golf, so 2020’s 1.47 featuring live action understandably saw a huge uptick. Golf Channel’s coverage also remained largely steady, signaling that Sunday’s Genesis killer was XFL football and an absence of Tiger Woods contending.

Speaking of football, the NFL has unveiled a planned playoff expansion starting in 2021, with a 17-game season in 2022. Both would have significant impacts on early season PGA Tour golf.

Kostis: "The PGA Tour doesn't give a rat’s ass about the quality of the telecast. They don’t care about the quality of the viewer experience."

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Longtime CBS golf announcer Peter Kostis has joined Chris Solomon on this week’s No Laying Up podcast (embed below). He makes several frank statements about the PGA Tour’s role in his firing, the quality of broadcasts and the future when they gain more control over production. (I finally had to pause though I hear the rest on Patrick Reed is also going to be blog worthy tomorrow).

As always I urge you to listen, but for the sake of documentation, quotes as I jotted them down during this stunning listen.

—On his non-renewal last fall from CBS. “I don’t think there was a plan in place. They had not signed other announcers. prior to not renewing Gary’s and my option years. So I don’t think there was a plan in place.”

—On who drove his non-renewal: “I honestly think, and this is my opinion, and it’s been corroborated by some anonymous inside sources, that media likes to use these days, that it was the tour that told CBS to get younger, I think the Tour had an issue with me not being a cheerleader, I think they had an issue with Gary sometimes…

He goes on to tell a story about a classic McCord quip regarding the silliness of golf that was not comprehended by the folks in Tour HQ.

Then issues this: “They wanted the announce crew to get younger, so the younger players could better relate to the players and vice versa. I don’t agree with that in any way, shape or form.”

—On his call with CBS Sports head Sean McManus: “I asked Sean McManus, why he was doing it, was it something I did or didn’t do. He said ‘Things had gotten a bit stale and we wanted to go in a new direction.’ He denies it now but that was the exact quote and that’s what he told Gary as well.”

—Majors are off-limits. Kostis tells of interview a player on his first win, and noting that it came with two years of job security and a Masters invitation. “I got a call the next day from New York, they had gotten a call from the Commissioner, that he had won 500 FedExCup points and didn’t want me talking about majors.” He then mentions he did it again in another interview. “I did it again, because they told me not to do it, if you notice toward the middle of last year, I stopped doing interviews with the winners. They shifted it over to Amanda.
It was me being told I wasn’t listening correctly.”

—On where things are headed. “The Tour wants more control over what’s being said. I think they want more cheerleaders on the telecasts. More people that are going to “promote the Tour’s product,” you know which, we’re bridging into the stuff that people are really upset about: the quality of the telecast: I’ll say this, from the bottom of my heart, I believe this, no one in management of a network, or leadership of the PGA Tour, give’s a rat’s ass about the quality of the telecast. They don’t care about the quality of the viewer experience. They don’t care about anything other than promotion.”

—”When the Tour keeps up and upping the rights fees, CBS has to get the money back somehow, hence, a gajilion commercials. The Tour goes to the Korn Ferry Tour, we’re going to give you pops, FedEx ex number of times…

“So they use the telecast to pay off, if you will, people who bring money into the tour. It clutters up the telecast to no end.”

And…

”They are interested in the marketing of the product, not the quality of the product.”

—On the next model. “The word on the street, there is not going to be a CBS compound, NBC compound, but an Olympics world feed” and then later says, “Imagine what’s going to have to happen on the telecast…I’m not one feeling good about the tour taking over more control.”

—On Rights fee influences. “As long as the cost of the rights keep going up and up and up, you’re going to see less and less golf.” And he said, “everything’s driven by cash.”

—$25 Million!? “Rumors that the FedExCup winner is going to get $25 million.”

—Gambling. “Everything is going to revolve around gambling” in the PGA Tour’s future models for revenue growth.

—One monitor vs. two. Kostis explains how it works for CBS vs. NBC announcers and suggests it’s “disingenuous” of NBC announcers who call shots on tape as if they are seeing them live.

A Rough CBS Weekend Should Prompt Questions About Next TV Deal Parameters

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Presumably in the coming weeks we’ll finally learn the outcome of the PGA Tour’s negotiations with CBS, NBC, Golf Channel and ESPN+.

Maybe at the Players Championship we’ll learn—just throwing out a number here—that they’re going to get paid $8 billion over ten years. Players will swoon, north Florida BMW dealers will take extra special orders and second homes will be purchased by bonus-receiving executives.

But a very simple question will need to be addressed by Commissioner Jay Monahan: how will taking more money from networks make golf on television better? What guarantees will there be to improve the “product”? Or, to put it B-speak parlance, how will this deal “grow the game” with better productions?

The question is a logical one given that we suffered through another dreadful CBS presentation of the Genesis Invitational. The reactions both public and privately ranged from disgust to outright shock at the inability of the network to tell the PGA Tour story with any coherence.

CBS entered the season still fresh off of buyouts that depleted their team, several new announcers and the usual array of promotional excess interfering with the ability to show a triple bogey by the world No. 1 when he’s contending. Or a topped tee shot by the co-leader only shown after social media griping. Things did not improve when Frank Nobilo questioned a story about the moment and was met by commenters with nearly unanimous disdain for the broadcast.

I was on course most of the day so only saw the Golf Channel replay Monday. What I saw was sad. There was a lack of storytelling, weird mistakes and even more bizarre decisions to ignore several contenders. Then there was the absence of technology to explain why the course was a factor. A telestrator in front of Nick Faldo, anyone?

CBS also devoted a crew to Tiger’s dead-last play on the front nine and didn’t even provide basic audio to give a sense of the atmosphere. The entire thing could not have been flatter or more clearly showing signs of missing all of the institutional crew knowledge that went out the door last year.

And this, for a tournament hosted by Tiger Woods enjoying “elevated status” and dream-sponsor in Genesis.

If you want more, Ryan Ballengee detailed many of the issues here.

No Laying Up’s podcast this week also highlighted many of the problems and then some.

And not to be outdone, the Shotgun Start guys also chimed in at the continued issues doing the basics.

I could go on about how the Genesis CEO’s ill-fitting shirt went live before a too-tight camera shot for a painful 3:17, or point out that it’s too soon to be showing helicopters flying around LA, and just go on and on. But it turns out these are not questions for me to raise.

These are questions for the PGA Tour to answer when announcing a ten year and $8 billion at the Players, hypothetically.

Will there be money left over to invest in a broadcast and a business model that allows networks to show golf instead of merely coming on air to share an excess of commercials and promos interspersed with golf shots?

Does the new deal demonstrate any care for the viewer hoping to savor great golf on a fabulous venue, perhaps even with telecast elements that enhance the experience? Or will everything just look like the what we have now to help pay for a bump in the Bermuda Championship’s purse?

Varner's Not-Intentional Lay-Up At 10: To Show Or Not To Show A Bad Shot?

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Harold Varner (purple shirt) just off Riviera’s 10th tee short of the first fairway bunker.

Harold Varner (purple shirt) just off Riviera’s 10th tee short of the first fairway bunker.

Leading the Genesis Invitational at the time, Harold Varner hit an unfortunate 129-yard tee shot at Riviera’s 10th and ultimately made double bogey. Yet CBS did not show the shot for almost an hour. (Other issues with the broadcast were noted here by Joel Beall at GolfDigest.com.)

Not until the 14th hole and after much social media griping did CBS show the shot as Varner was playing the 14th hole.

After the round, Varner explained what happened:

Q. Did your foot slip at all?

HAROLD VARNER III: I don't know, I just know I missed it, I missed the ball. I couldn't tell you what exactly happened. I just know that I hit the dirt before the ball. I've actually done it before, which is funny enough. I did it in Korea, same exact thing, same exact wind.

Q. Were you playing off the deck before then, too?
HAROLD VARNER III: No, I teed that up. Yeah, I wish I would have hit it off the deck.

Q. And then after that now you've got to regroup and try to approach the hole from a different way, right?

HAROLD VARNER III: Yeah, I was screwed pretty much. Yeah, it's not like you can just hit the next one on the green and be like, all right, salvage it. Yeah, it's just funny, I'm looking at the hole right now as we're talking about it. It is what it is. There's nothing I can really do about it. I just wish I would have rebounded a little bit better. That's what I kind of, you know, alluded to all week is just how you respond to it.

No one wants to pick on Varner or revel in his horrendous shot. But not showing it until after a social media storm suggests that it may have been intentionally kept off-air.

At last year’s Genesis, a final round 8 by Jordan Spieth at the same hole was also not shown.

Naturally, CBS has a truckload of promos to show and other obligations as the round proceeds, but one of the three leaders hitting a disastrous tee shot by PGA Tour standards, should have been a focal point of the broadcast.

And while social media can get carried away with telecast griping, the outrage likely stems in part from a sense that network broadcasts and announcers increasingly are feeling pressure to put players only in the best light.

Had Varner made a miraculous par, perhaps the tee shot might have been shown sooner than the 14th hole. Either way, the overall sense of a State television vibe will only make fans less interested in watching PGA Tour golf, even when the player does something all golfers can relate to.

**This just in to Newscenter 7 with the video:

CBS’s Frank Nobilo took to Twitter to defend the coverage.

In Next Media Deal, PGA Tour Expected To Take On Most Broadcast Production

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Multiple well-placed sources confirmed to GeoffShackelford.com a major change in the next PGA Tour media rights deal.

Modeled in some ways after the Olympic Broadcast System, production will be handled by a primary PGA Tour operation providing a world feed to likely broadcast partners CBS, NBC, Golf Channel, ESPN+ and GolfTV. The networks will retain production independence with the final product, along with familiar voices by producing announcers, graphics, replay and other extras beyond the “world feed”.

The move allows the PGA Tour to more cohesively produce coverage and improve PGA Tour Live streaming presentation that has often looked under-produced.

The change to a more connected production operation will allow for expanded streaming feed options on likely digital rightsholder ESPN+, including an expected instruction channel, a Red Zone style option for highlights, more Featured Groups and a Live Under Par-infused feed aimed at younger audiences.

When contacted, the PGA Tour, NBC/Golf Channel and CBS, each declined comment, citing the ongoing negotiations. The current media rights deal expires after the 2021 PGA Tour season.

"If you like vanilla, you’ll love CBS’ new lineup "

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Hate to agree as we all want golf TV to be better, but John Hawkins pretty accurately sums up the rough start to 2020 CBS golf broadcasts here:

Dottie Pepper is excellent. Mark Immelman has a high ceiling and is fast becoming a source of pertinence and polish. Since David Feherty hopped to NBC in 2016, however, the Eye has gone blind to the value of building a team with people who played the game and are fully stocked with knowledge about every competitor, yet remain unfazed by the task of imparting pure objectivity when the situation demands it.

“Hopefully, that came out of the plug mark,” IBF offered after Matt Every dumped a pitch into a greenside bunker Sunday on Pebble Beach’s eighth hole.

“When things go wrong here, there’s no real way of taking the shortcuts,” Faldo added while Every cleaned up his triple bogey.

Pompoms and nonsense. They’re fine at a high school pep rally, but at a gathering of the world’s finest golfers vying for the largest share of a $7.8 million purse, a major network with more than 60 years in the business should know better than to shortchange its educated, dedicated viewership.

Early in 2020, it has been confounding as a viewer to hear announcers question strategic choices, or issue early critiques only to somehow always apologize in some way, or justify the play. Sometimes players just make a mistake or play a poor shot. As Hawkins notes, the viewers know and understand that such things happen in golf. Why pretend differently?

2020 Waste Management Ratings Hit Nine-Year Low

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Paulsen at SportsMediaWatch.com reports the nine-year-low Waste Management Open ratings despite a solid leaderboard and compelling finish on CBS. Webb Simpson defeated Tony Finau on the first playoff hole for his sixth PGA Tour win.

Sunday’s final round of the PGA Tour Phoenix Open averaged a 1.75 rating and 2.87 million viewers on CBS, marking the tournament’s smallest final round audience since 2011 (2.70M). Webb Simpson’s playoff win, which ended shortly before the Super Bowl began, declined 30% in ratings and viewership from both last year and 2018 (2.5, 4.08M).

Third round action on Saturday averaged a 1.45 and 2.19 million, down 16% in both measures from last year (1.7, 2.60M) and down 30% and 34% respectively from 2018 (2.1, 3.30M).

Last year’s Waste Management featuring Rickie Fowler drew a 2.5/4.075 viewers, a six-year high on NBC due to it being a CBS Super Bowl year, which was the event’s second largest audience ever.

According to ShowBuzzDaily, the early round weekend coverage drew nice-sized audiences as long as you are not an age-discriminating ad executive, where the coveted 18-49’s were in short supply (126k, 132k averages).

Sunday’s .1 placed the early coverage 61st among cable shows, edging out Nickelodeon’s Lego Jurassic World.

Brooks Koepka Only Sure Of One Thing After A Week In Saudia Arabia: No In-Round Interviews

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The soon-to-be-former World No. 1 as of this week, Brooks Koepka traveled to Saudi Arabia for a huge appearance fee, changed drivers, changed putters and finished T17 after a final round 72.

So while Brooks Koepka works out his bag and what to do with the Crown Prince’s cash before resurfacing at Riviera, he has no doubts about the kind of in-round chat that flustered GMac enough to put him on the clock.

From Martin Dempster’s Scotsman report:

“To be honest with you, I don’t know any other sport that does interviews in the middle of play,” said Koepka, inset, a four-time major winner, in offering his view after catapulting himself into the top ten in the $3.5 million event on the Red Sea coast with a five-under-par 65.

“I know in football you’re not doing it, unless it’s in the Pro Bowl basketball you’re not doing it unless it’s half-time. This is the only sport where you’re talking to people while they are playing. I won’t do it. I’m not interested in talking about what just happened or the difficulty of the holes ahead. I’m just focussed on one shot at a time, where my ball’s at. I understand why it might be beneficial for the fans, but I don’t get it.”

As the first world turns…

We discussed today on Morning Drive:



One Night Only: Feherty And McCord Reuniting, For Now

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Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic learns from David Feherty of a one-night reunion with his former CBS sidekick Gary McCord.

Instead of his normal standup, Feherty will do his first half then return with McCord at Phoenix’s Orpheum theater. He says “God knows where this is going to go.”

This should be a lively evening given McCord’s recent non-renewal from CBS and believe that he was unfairly blamed for the state of their broadcasts. James Colgan at Golf.com with that backstory.

Given last weekend’s rough start for CBS, he may be smarting even more.

As for Feherty, he had some good things to say in the discussion with Goodykoontz. Including this:

Q: Do golf announcers take themselves too seriously sometimes?

A: Oh, without question, I think every sport does. The bottom line is it’s a game, it’s a diversion from everyday life. It shouldn’t be taken that seriously. There’s a whole lot of things more important (laughs).

Q: I don’t want to leave the impression that all you and McCord ever did was make jokes. You make serious calls, too.

A: There’s a time to do that and a time to have fun. It’s recognizing the difference, I think. It’s still golf.

Q: And if it’s going well, you comment on that.

A: It can also be bad. We’ve had telecasts where I thought, (expletive), it’s like a pro-am broke out. I mean, these guys can’t play at all. That’s when the broadcaster earns his money — when it’s not so good on the screen. I trust viewers to be able to watch. It’s a visual medium. When the golf is really good, it needs punctuation, and that’s all.