Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Tuesday's Trends

Notwithstanding that Park City reported 13" of fresh white stuff, here is your humble blogger pecking away at the keyboard.  Now stop me if you've heard this before, but it's a wet, heavy 13"....

The good news is that it's supposed to keep snowing all day, what we in the trade refer to as free refills.  The bad news is that my life out here resembles an Agatha Christie mystery, with my one remaining permanent Park City ski buddy specifically not a morning person, so we'll be on Lee Standard Time today.  In fact our friendship is unlikely, given that we're only awake for about two of the same hours in a day.  

So a light day of blogging....

I Saw It On TV - Ch-Ch-Changes are afoot:

Good news, I don't think we need to expend much energy worrying about them getting worse....

This is certainly one take on things:

Networks understand that golf needs to appeal to a younger audience. It’s great that people 50 and over love and watch the sport, because that demographic tends to have more leisure time and more
disposable income - things that advertisers crave in a viewer. But the sport needs younger viewers, too, fans who will embrace the sport now and follow the young stars for the next 15 or 20 years or even longer. So younger voices might seem like the right thing to do.

It’s not that Maltbie or Koch or McCord or Kostis did a bad job of reporting on PGA Tour events or were rapidly deteriorating as broadcasters. But inevitably, older voices get pushed aside by younger voices. That’s true in any part of media or entertainment.

Yes, but the trick is to accomplish that without alienating those core customers, something the Tour has been pretty ham-fisted about, not least with that Live Under Par™ campaign.

But this rousing coda will be unlikely to rally the troops:

But it will be different watching golf as 2023 begins not hearing Faldo or Maltbie or Koch. Some familiar voices, such as Mark Rolfing at NBC and Ian Baker-Finch at CBS, remain, as do the main anchors for their network, Dan Hicks at NBC and Jim Nantz at CBS.

Will it be better or worse? Chances are it will be about the same, with the networks throwing in some technical innovations but hanging on to the tried and true method of broadcasting a PGA Tour event. Sometimes it isn’t the voices that need to be freshened, it is the approach to the broadcast itself that gets stale.

Either way, golf will look familiar in 2023 on NBC, CBS and Golf Channel, even if it sounds a little different.

Although anyone who pines for Sir Mumbles should be required to re-watch last year's Masters broadcast, wherein his excuse for that egregious spoiler was that he couldn't control himself and completely forgot the competitive situation, two obvious qualifications for the job he held.

More substantively, according to this in the invaluable Sports Business Journal, the Tour has actually awakened to their questionable presentation:

The PGA Tour and its broadcast partners are hearing their fans’ call for more golf in 2023, as
NBC/ Golf Channel and CBS are both stepping up efforts to streamline broadcasts and add technological innovations as the season resumes this week in Hawaii.

A common complaint among fans is that not enough golf is shown during broadcasts on the weekends, with the networks’ commercial ad load inundating significant portions of the telecasts. By contrast, Saudi-backed LIV Golf is able to show unlimited shots due to its lack of sponsors.

Now, the Tour, broadcast and corporate partners are working together to show more golf on their platforms. That starts this week, from 7-8pm ET, when Golf Channel and Peacock will show the last hour of the final round of the Sentry Tournament of Champions commercial free for the first time, with presenting sponsorship from Callaway Golf. The commercial-free, presenting sponsorship option is on the table for all sponsors and events, NBC lead producer Tommy Roy said. “Whenever we can have commercial-free golf, we do it,” Roy said. “To get it here on the first designated event, to get it on Sunday, we’re really happy.”

Yeah, which has exactly zero to do with younger voices, but whatever...

This seems a bit of a mixed bag:

One of those ways is the standard interview with the CEO of the tournament sponsor, who typically joins either Dan Hicks on NBC or Jim Nantz on CBS for an 18th tower interview during Sunday coverage. One option has been moving that interview to Saturday’s third-round coverage, something that select tournament sponsors have been open to. Other options mentioned specifically by Shy are using sponsored tabs on the network’s constant leaderboard, or tweaking its “out of town” leaderboard segment that shows scores from the Korn Ferry Tour or other PGA Tour-affiliated circuits. “Possibly truncating some of these obligations yet fulfilling them,” Shy said.

Both networks have already been utilizing side-by-side coverage in recent years to show ads and live coverage at the same time. Shy noted CBS is “about 50/50” when it comes to full-screen commercials and side-by-side. PGA Tour SVP/Media and Gaming Norb Gambuzza said overall, 42% of ad breaks on broadcasts are of the side-by-side variety, and they are working with CBS and NBCU to grow that number.

I can't tell you how much I hate the dual windows, in which we have to trust the network to not show anything that's really significant.  Of course, these folks haven't exactly earned our trust in how they present, have they?

But there's no downside to this, which was used to spectacular effect at Kapalua:

TAKE TO THE AIR: Viewers can expect to see a significant uptick in coverage from above in 2023, as both CBS and NBC have plans to increase aerial shots at tournaments, albeit via different methods. NBC and Golf Channel this week will utilize a drone at the Tournament of Champions for the first time, showing off Kapalua’s famed 18th hole and other vistas around the Plantation course, providing what Roy described as “wow” shots for viewers.

CBS will ramp up use of its fly cam this season, especially at the designated events, following the success it saw at last year’s Waste Management Phoenix Open when it captured Sam Ryder’s ace at the famed 16th hole on Saturday. Designated events this season that could see fly cam usage including the Wells Fargo Championship (18th hole), Tour Championship (around the finishing holes at East Lake) and the 18th at the Travelers Championship in Connecticut, among others, Shy said. “We want to match the strength of the stars on the course,” he said.

Spoiler alert:  Most venues aren't like Kapalua.  So, while the drones are great, at Hartford all you'll see is the housing stock surrounding the golf course....

In the freebie portion of a Quad post on this subject, Geoff had some fun with these moves:

The move: Commercial free final hours. This option, according to NBC producer Tommy Roy, will be available to all sponsors and events. This is an obvious and overdue move after the successful incorporation of Rolex’s sponsorship at the U.S. Open dating to the Fox years.

Reaction: It’s unclear why this is only now something to do on a Tour broadcast, but we’ll take what should become standard on all significant events. Callaway took the opportunity at the Sentry TOC and it was tremendous. The stark difference in staying with the closing stretch action as Collin Morikawa folded gave the announcers time to put the shocking conclusion into better perspective without having to worry going to a break or cross-promoting…oh wait, they had to do a little of that. But the important thing to remember: execution of Callaway’s final hour sponsorship was not overbearing nor disrespectful to Sentry. And what a huge difference this made for viewers.

It's great and, while it's hard to understand the delay given what Rolex has been doing in majors, let's be thankful for small favors.  It does require a sponsor to step up, however, and the fear might be that this will be an additional wedge among the elevated designated events and those other orphans.

You knew this one would draw flak:

The move: Taking the contractually obligated 18th tower CEO interviews to Saturdays.

Reaction: What does it say about the egos of CEO’s that this has to be gingerly presented publicly through an industry publication when it’s such lay-up? I can imagine Commissioner calls that get sent to voicemail knowing the likely reason he’s calling. “Hey Bob, it’s Jay here, congrats on the third quarter earnings! Those layoffs really trimmed the fat off the bone! Inspiring! Say, uh, look, I love hearing from you and about your C.I.’s [charitable initiatives] every year. It’s a real highlight of the product. But look, not sure if know it, but a lot of our C-level eyeballs are on Saturdays. What would you think about doing your inspiring conversation with Nantz on Saturday this year? Let me know what you think and thanks again for kicking in another $4 million to be designated. Call anytime, I’ll pick up even if I’m in Steamboat!”

The one to watch here might be AT&T at Pebble.  One would assume they'd already be miffed by their non-designated status, but cutting away from the CEO on Saturday to watch Ray Romano putt out for a net triple will be appointment TV.

And one last bit before the dreaded paywall (and I'm wondering if I need to subscribe):

The move: More “side-by-side” ads with live coverage but minus audio. CBS producer Sellers Shy told Carpenter that the network is at “about 50/50” when it comes to running ads this way, and Tour SVP of Media and Gaming Norb Gambuzza said 42% of ad breaks are of the side-by-side variety with hopes of going higher.

Reaction: The CBS execution of this has been better thanks to a slightly larger viewing window. The NBC version, used initially at majors and now all too regularly, positively stinks. This week at Kapalua here’s what it looked like with stagnant action and the smaller box for “action”:


Combined with the noticeably louder commercial audio, it’s hard to see many fans viewing these as a promising feature. Perhaps a live 10-second ad read by announcers or increased on screen “branding” would be more positive for the sponsor and viewer.

Yeah, it sucks.

Now, one last take, which is pretty amusing:

 Well, I don't know if they got all of them.....  Where's Grayson Murray and Robert Allenby these days?

You can read the full interview or not, as I don't think there's much there beyond the amusement in the header.

Jay In Full - Mr. Monahan deigned to submit to questions from the media, and we have two Rashomon-like takes.  Dylan Dethier provides a conventional take here:

Jay Monahan met with media. Here are 15 issues he addressed

Not that there aren't interesting nuggets, such as this parsing of the number of angels on the head of a pin:

3. Monahan had a hand in the Delaware player’s meeting — but it wasn’t his meeting.

“That was a meeting called by Tiger and Rory,” he said of this year’s high-profile player’s meeting, which took place in Delaware at the BMW Championship and featured roughly two
dozen of the tour’s top stars. Woods and McIlroy led the meeting and got pros in attendance to commit to this year’s designated events, thus strengthening and consolidating the schedule.

Monahan added that while he didn’t dictate which players would be invited, he had a good understanding of who would attend and what would be discussed. He added that there were additional players who were invited to the meeting but didn’t end up attending.

“I think the reality of that is I had a lot of conversations with Tiger and Rory,” he said. “So I had a general sense of what they were talking about, absolutely.” 

Which basically tells us that the revised Tour architecture was designed by the two guys most unlike the remainder of the Tour's membership.  So, yeah, the Tour while fighting off the LIV challenge, will end up looking much more like LIV, not necessarily a good thing.

This was interesting as well:

1. The Tour granted every Saudi International request.

Monahan confirmed reports from earlier this week that a number of PGA Tour players have applied to play in this year’s Saudi International, an Asian Tour event held opposite the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Tour players have been asking for Saudi International releases for years; last year 30 or so Tour pros applied, many of them beckoned to the Kingdom by massive appearance fees. But this year feels different given everything that has happened with LIV in the past 12 months and given that the event is sponsored by the Public Investment Fund, the same group that’s behind LIV. (You can bet there will be a sizable contingent of LIV players there, too. Cameron Smith has already committed.) But Monahan said the Tour went through its typical process and the releases were “treated in the exact same manner that they were in 2022” given it’s an Asian Tour event.

Monahan confirmed that the Tour approved every player who asked for a release. He declined to name any names.

Here’s where it gets tricky. Remember last year, when the Tour said that pros could go play the Saudi International as long as they played the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am twice in the next three years (or once in the next two years, if they’d played Pebble in the last five seasons)? Well, now it’s coming time to pay those debts.

A significant number of the 30 Tour pros who got releases in 2022 have now gone to LIV. (Harold Varner III, Bubba Watson, Cameron Smith, Matthew Wolff, Abraham Ancer, Dustin Johnson and Joaquin Niemann all finished in the event’s top 10 last year.)

But there are other Tour pros who played last year but didn’t make the jump to LIV. Jason Dufner, Tony Finau, Tommy Fleetwood, Tyrrell Hatton, Lucas Herbert, Shane Lowry, Xander Schauffele and Jhonattan Vegas caught my eye at first glance. They have some debts to pay these next couple of years, and Monahan says they’ll be expected to pay them.

“Yeah, January of last year I think we laid out the rule very clearly as it relates to the number of times that they would have to play either of the next two or three years, and those rules apply,” he said.

So, we should see all those guys at Pebble?  But when do we get the list of guys going to Saudi this year?  I mean besides Mito....

Quite a different take comes from Alan Shipnuck:

Deep in the Plantation Course clubhouse, behind a wall of hats in the pro shop, through some backroom cubicles, there is a small, windowless conference room. A few minutes before 11 on Sunday morning, a dozen frumpy sportswriters (and one well-tanned TV smoothie) were ushered into the room for an audience with the most embattled man in professional golf, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan. I sat to his right, and we made awkward eye contact.

“Hello, Jay.”

“Hello, Alan.”

The Commish could not quite contain his smirk. I spent most of 2022 trying to get a one-on-one sit-down interview with Monahan but was thwarted at every turn by the watch dogs in the Tour’s communications department. I don’t like asking questions in press conference settings because in this business, information is the coin of the realm; if the subject says something funny, or controversial, or particularly insightful, it will be cherry-picked by the aggregating elves at every golf website and thus lose its luster. At the Tour Championship in late August, I was desperate enough to throw some moderately tough questions at Monahan, which seemed to arouse the interest of the former high school hockey player. When I cornered him afterward, he said, “I know what you’re doing.” It was slightly enigmatic, but I believe he was referring to the book I’m working on about the battle between the Tour and LIV Golf. He fixed me with a look and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to you.”

OK, sounds like a remake of Roger and Me, but let's see where he takes it.  Though the new book is newsworthy, although I'm still awaiting my refund for his prior release.

Though as you read Alan's account, it seems he's the source of all fifteen of Dylan's items:

The Kapalua confab was Monahan’s first time meeting the press since then. In advance of it, a
Tour official requested that I keep things “cordial.” Monahan looked tan but a little tired, having jetted in from Florida a couple of days earlier. (No one had the temerity to ask if he had flown commercial in the wake of damning revelations from The Wall Street Journal about the commissioner’s extensive jet-setting on the company plane.) He began with brief opening remarks, but I wanted to cut to the matter: A fundamental issue at the Tour level has always been, Do the players work for the commissioner or does the commissioner work for the players? The Delaware uprising—the mid-August meeting at which Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy convened a bunch of their friends and reshaped the entire Tour schedule—seemed to answer that question, but I have always been curious about Monahan’s role behind the scenes. I asked if he had any input about which players were in the room. “That was a meeting that was called by Tiger and Rory,” he said. “I may have made suggestions. I understood who was going to be in the room, but it was their meeting. I mean, I want to be very clear that it was their meeting.”

And this:

One kernel of news that came out of the Kapalua conference room was that the Tour has agreed to grant releases to some of its members to play in next month’s Saudi International, which is not a LIV event but is co-sanctioned by the Asian Tour. I asked Monahan about the process of reviewing such requests; these granular bureaucratic processes have become of more interest in this era of golf’s warring tribes. The players may have seized control of the Tour, but in certain matters it remains a monarchy. Monahan said the leaders of his competition department review the release applications and make a recommendation but the commissioner makes the final call. I asked Monahan if he ever overrules the advice.

“I’m sure I have,” he replied.

Did anyone else ask a question?  And this is his self-absorbed conclusion:

The meeting broke up and all of us filed out of the conference room. Near a sale rack in the Kapalua pro shop, I cornered Monahan again and asked if we could continue the conversation in a more private setting. “As was promised at the Tour Championship,” I noted, helpfully.

“I probably shouldn’t have said that,” he said.

“Ah, but you did,” I countered.

Monahan flashed a big, broad smile and reached out to shake my hand. “Alan, thank you,” the commissioner said, and then he was gone.

Though perhaps the most interesting bit was this after-action tweet from Alan:

I'm thinking that his chances of that one-on-one are asymptotically approaching zero.... Though am I the only one that thinks he seems a bit self-entitled?

I enjoy Alan's work, especially his hot takes in his mailbag feature, though some of his reporting on Phil and LIV leave me puzzled.  But I can't imagine that Jay will give him the time of day going forward, and not sure he should.

I'm going to leave you here and get on with my day.  Not sure of a blogging schedule, but check back early and often.

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