PGA Championship Television Woes, TNT And UK Streaming Edition

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2018 brings with it the same PGA Championship broadcast window woes of the past. 

While CBS has upped their technology game this year, the ironclad PGA contract with CBS and TNT has not been touched since 2009. Today's low early scoring and even a brief 59 watch only adds to the equation.

As John Strege wrote yesterday for GolfDigest.com when none of Rickie Fowler's opening 65 could be seen, TNT was airing episodes of Charmed and Supernatural. And there was this:

In the nearly 30 years that Turner Sports has been telecasting the first two rounds of the PGA Championship, it has always employed the same six-hour window. (Incidentally, its current broadcast rights contract with the PGA of America, negotiated in 2009, runs through 2019.)

One more year and then the PGA of America can give us something else almost assuredly better for the opening rounds and lead-in coverage. 

But if American fans think they have it bad, check out James Gray's Express story on the inauspicious start for the IMG-negotiated, streaming-only PGA broadcast in the UK by the upstart Eleven Sports.

However, the broadcaster announced its more ambitious intentions for 2018 when it secured deals to show La Liga, Serie A, the Eredivise and the Chinese Super League in the UK - as well as the PGA Championship.

Coverage of golf’s fourth major came in for criticism last year after BBC picked up where Sky Sports had dropped it, only to produce a half-hearted effort at producing a replacement.