(For an overview of our cast of characters, click here)
Rick: Nice approach
on 18 Tucker – you punk. If you’d hit it
like that all day you would’ve pounded us.
Tucker: Yeah, and if my aunt had a Johnson, she’d be my
uncle. Sure I couldn’t find it for about
15 or 17 holes, but when I had to have one, I found it. Did I mention the beer always tastes better
when you’re buying – I’m good for a Corona with a lime. You don’t need a lime in
yours – you’re sour enough already.
Rick: Ha – oh, that’s funny – you’re killing me – you may
end up with some secret sauce in yours if you’re not careful.
Walt: I’m good for Corona as well – hey, any of you boys check out the details on the new PGA Tour TV
deal for 2007?
Tucker: What for – you’ll give us all the highlights, I
count on you for my PGA Tour headlines. It’s just so much easier to get the relevant news second-hand than to
actually go out and read it myself. Reading it and processing it is so much more work than just having it
spoon-fed to me.
Walt: Apparently most of the media agrees with you – and
thinks that many of us would rather have our sports news spoon fed to us,
particularly when their conclusions don’t quite jibe with the facts.
Billy: Jive – did you just say jive? You gotta got off those “What’s happening?”
reruns on Nickelodeon
– they are putting your vocabulary in the remedial section. Now “what you talking about Willis” – there’s
some classic TV.
Walt: Yeah, good call, from the show that either put you six
feet under or in drug rehab – think we’ll pass on the Different Strokes Tivo season
pass. Now back to our topic – the new TV
contract. ABC, ESPN and USA are out – NBC and CBS now split virtually all the big-time tourneys and the
Golf Channel has a 15-year deal to do the fall events and the early rounds for
some of the rest. Gary Van Sickle at SI.com
makes some interesting
points, including that there’s a dark side of Tiger’s success in the past
decade – lot less people watching events he’s not playing. For example, Tucker is still blissfully
unaware that they even have a PGA tournament on Super Bowl weekend.
Tucker: There is? Well
hey, I can be forgiven – with my Patriots winning 3 of the last 4 Super Bowls
I’ve been kind of busy on Super Bowl Sunday. Where do they play – over there in Dubai or somewhere?
Walt: Uh, yes, but that’s not the PGA tour.
Rick: Yo, chowder-head, that’s 3 of 5. My Steelers took care of the Sea Chickens
this year while your Pats watched on TV like the rest of us. So back to the topic, if Dubai’s not a PGA event why is at always the
lead on SportsCenter?
Walt: Maybe because Tiger’s playing over there. I don’t seem to remember it being found on
SportsCenter when Tiger wasn’t in it. Dubai, of course, is one
of those scourge tournaments that pay, ahem, appearance fees.
Billy: It’s a lot like the Deutsche
Bank – Tiger visits Germany while the boys are playing Colonial to honor Hogan and what’s the lead
story? Tiger trails by 2 with a 68 –
Clarke and Westwood tied for the lead in about font size 4 as a sub-head. You gotta be kidding me – and everyone knows
the reason he’s not playing Colonial
is because it’s a Bank of America tourney and he’s a Deutsche Bank guy. Tiger talks all the time about the history of
the game and his respect for the legends like Arnie and Jack – hey, El Tigre,
how about a little love for the wee ice man Mr. Hogan – oh, I’m sorry, that
doesn’t quite line up with your sponsor list, well isn’t that unfortunate?
Tucker: Yo Steelhead – enough Super Bowl chatter
already. That game was so boring I dozed
off during the second quarter – thankfully woke up in time to see that great
“magic fridge” commercial – classic. How
much did it cost you boys to put those refs in your pocket? Man, that push-off on Jackson in the first
quarter, and that phantom holding call, along with the Charles
White sequel best known as “really, Ben scored on that play?” made it tough
for you guys to lose.
Walt: Enough football – let’s try and stay on topic. Like I was saying, there’s a little
tournament in Phoenix Super Bowl weekend – the FBR Open.
Tucker: I’m sure like 17 people watched it in between
offensive series – and believe me in that first quarter most of them were
offensive, it stunk worse than those cattle feedlots on the 5 freeway on our
drives down to SoCal. And why should
they watch – Tiger’s not there and nothing exciting ever happens at tournaments
he’s not playing.
Walt: Wrong again, young grasshopper, they had over 500,000 fans in person and
a fair number on TV because they’re smart enough to finish before the Super
Bowl starts. You would hope that
entertaining golf could beat some of the 10-plus hour pre-game show, and this
one was real entertaining. Three bombers
were in the last group – J.J. Henry and Ryan Palmer can move it out there a
bit, but the star that emerged from Phoenix was
the 23 year old from Kentucky,
J.B. Holmes. Two months ago he won Q
school and in his 4th start he locks up his first PGA Tour
win with some clutch putts, some absolutely huge drives including a
354-yarder on the final hole, and a 263-yard, ahem, 4-iron to 14 feet on 15 –
and of course he made the putt for eagle and a 6-shot lead. He won by 7 – you could call this a
significant coming out party for J.B.,which the CBS crew did.
Rick: Wow – 354 – sounds like my kind of guy. I didn’t see it – I actually watch the entire
pre-game when the Steelers are in the big game. You’d be amazed how many things I did not know about the Steelers –
thankfully that got fixed with 8 hours of game-day education. What a great investment of time on my part –
OK, the web
helped a little bit. So that sounds
kind of entertaining – hey, anytime a guy is hitting it 263 with a 4-iron – and
that’s over water, I believe – that is getting it done, even more so when it’s
under final round pressure. So why
weren’t people watching?
Walt: Presumably because Tiger’s in Dubai, so watching a different tournament
strikes some people as a waste of time.
Tucker: Wait a minute – I remember this tourney. Tiger did play it once or twice early in his
career – he made an ace there on 16, right? How exciting was that – Tiger buries it with about 50,000 people
watching in that stadium seating around 16 then plays raise the rough as he
approaches the green. That place was off
the hook – I’ve seen arena football games with less noise.
Walt: Yeah, there’s the comparison you want – against the
noise level at an AFL game – woohoo, way to set your sights high. Let’s not forget, Tiger was trailing Steve
Jones by double digits at the time – Jones
went on to win by 11. That was a
nice little shot by Tiger, and of course ESPN runs that highlight as if it
helped Tiger win the tourney and take the PGA to a whole new level of fan awareness
and insanity. In reality, it probably
drove Tiger out of town – less than two years later Tiger was complaining about
the Phoenix crowd being too rowdy. Imagine that –
Tiger complaining about the same crowd he fired up getting out of hand a few years
later. Maybe tournaments without Tiger
aren’t boring – maybe they’re just tournaments without Tiger but with a lot of
other great players hitting some tremendous shots under pressure, like J.B.’s
263-yard 4-iron on 15. That was clutch –
whether you watched it or not.
Tucker: Yeah, but J.B. can hit all the nuked 4-irons and
drivers he wants – if Tiger’s not playing, he’s not going to get any kind of TV
audience and he’ll be on the 48th minute of SportsCenter, right
after highlights of Michelle Wie missing yet another cut in an obscure Nike
event in a city you’ve never heard of unless you or your relatives live
there. That’s Tim Finchem’s problem –
all these youngsters, bombers, and AARP wannabes like Fred Funk win tournaments
Tiger’s not playing in and expect people to watch.
Walt: Not so fast – Funk actually won the Players
Championship with Tiger in the field last year.
Tucker: Which makes my point – you want people to watch, win
with Tiger in the field. Want nobody to
watch – win when he’s not playing.
Walt: Hold on there Sparky – Tiger only plays about 21 tournaments a year
– and one of those is the British Open, so that makes 20 on this side of the
pond. There are 48 tournaments on the
2006 schedule. So there are 28
tournaments that Tiger’s never going to get beaten in – for those of you that
are math-challenged, that’s 58% of the tournaments!
Rick: That’s unbelievable that Finchem let’s those kind of
#s happen – what kind of commissioner is that guy? He should be setting it up so Tiger plays
every tournament – look at Nascar, they’ve got it set up so that there’s
incentives and almost all the Nascar boys show up every week. Now, admittedly, that could just be because
many of them are southern rednecks who never get tired of checking out the
trackside talent, which is apparently easier to get to know when you’ve
actually raced a vehicle instead of just standing around. If Nascar can do it, why can’t the PGA?
Walt: First of all they might not be rednecks, they could
just be horny. There’s quite a bit of
talent at the tracks, if you know what I mean. Second of all, Nascar built a brand around the events – the PGA has been
all about personality marketing, closer to the David Stern model, which is
great when Larry and Magic are going at it in the finals almost annually, then
hand it off to Michael who plays in the finals 6 out of 8 years, skipping only
two years for that little fling with baseball. Nowadays, with the Spurs and Pistons looking like mini-dynasties, it’s
really tough to try and shove Kobe and KG and the other score-a-bunch, don’t-ask-my-shooting-% idiots down the
public’s throat when they’re missing the playoffs or bowing out early.
Billy: So you’re saying the PGA chose the wrong model – they
marketed personalities when they should’ve been marketing events? I can understand that – sort of, I still need
more to drink to really comprehend it – waiter, scotch and soda, rocks, stat!
Walt: You’re pretty much on top of it Billy – nice work. But it’s not the PGA’s fault – they were
trying to market the whole tour with all the “these guys are good” commercials –
you know the ones, like Lefty hitting that wedge to David Robinson – see, the
Spurs can do cool commercials! – for a dunk at the buzzer.
Billy: Thanks waiter – glug glug glug – ahhhhhhhh, lunch of
champions. So wait a minute, that sounds
like personality marketing to the dummy sitting in my chair – they’re building
campaigns around the players. Shouldn’t
they build them around some of the great courses like Riviera or Pebble Beach or Bay Hill? The courses always show up and never get
injured – geez, I’m a sales guy but even I know that much about marketing.
Walt: Well, Billy, you’re smarter than the boys at PGA
headquarters – they went with the player campaign. Another great alternate would have been to go
with a campaign around the great finishes – Allenby’s 3-wood in a 6-man playoff
at Riviera,
Shaun Micheel’s 7-iron to ice the PGA Championship, and so on. If you sell the locations or the old
finishes, you don’t have to worry about who shows up.
Billy: Now of course if you sell that stuff you’re only
going to get the hard-core golf fans like us – wooh, hey, excuse me, sorry
about that, let’s not light any matches on this side of the room for a while,
OK?
Tucker: What’s that – oh, man, that’s putrid – whatever you
ate, don’t ever eat it again. I think
something died inside you and has been waiting to get out. I’ll … just … respond from over here where it’s
relatively safe. Gotta agree with Billy –
those types of campaigns aren’t the answer – they just get the guys who watch
golf anyway. I thought the last couple
of TV deals were huge. And if this
Tiger-skewed ratings stuff isn’t the PGA’s fault, then whose is it?
Walt: You’re right – those campaigns are going to get the
hard-core golf guys watching, and the last two TV deals were huge. That’s part of the problem, and why the
growth rates on this recent contract are so much smaller. The media early on decided that the PGA was
wrong – “these guys” may be good, but Tiger’s better for ratings. So they basically ignored a bunch of great performances
from guys like David Duval, Mark O’Meara, Retief Goosen, and Ernie Els to pump
up the Tiger hype machine. This got
casual golf fans to watch and drove the TV rates through the roof – the ’97 deal
was negotiated after Tiger’s break-out win at Augusta – the next contract after Tiger’s
slam. Fortunate timing for Tim, but
meanwhile the networks were losing a ton of money because the rest of the tournaments
had low ratings that more than offset the ratings when Tiger played and was in
contention. The PGA didn’t want Tiger to
skew the ratings – but the media made sure he did. Third time around the networks were getting
smart – they knew they’d been losing big and didn’t feel like getting pounded
by Finchem again. Meanwhile Finchem knew
that he was tired of playing roulette – imagine having to sell a TV deal on a
year where Tiger’s 0-for-4 at slams, or actually misses a cut at one.
Rick: Misses a cut – yeah, like that’s gonna happen. His streak is at like 140-something.
Walt: Not so fast there Rick – you’ve been drinking more
than Billy, thankfully without the after-effects. Tiger’s consecutive cuts streak ended at 142
at the Byron Nelson last year, and just for good measure he missed at Disney as
well, said something about wanting to show Elin his monorail, not sure what
that’s all about. Remember, a couple
times he’s been dangerously close to the cut line, including that one
tremendous up-and-down on the 9th at Augusta to make the cut on the
number – how tight do you figure the sphincters were on the CBS brass as he
lined up that putt?
Billy: About as tight as mine before I let out that air
biscuit?
Walt: I’ll say this – you’re not a funny drunk, just a
smelly one. So long story short, Finchem
got sick of betting on Tiger’s performances so he could stick it to the
networks. So he took the long-term deal,
shrunk networks covering it to spread the big tournaments out better – we all
know things split better 2 ways than 3. In short, Tim went from Russian roulette to master of his domain in a
hurry. Now he’s able to invest with NBC,
CBS, and the Golf Channel in some of the campaigns I was talking about and try
to make the events bigger than the personalities, which is the best way to play
it. More like Nascar, less like the NBA
and the PGA of the last 10 years.
Billy: I still think he’s better off making Tiger into Magic
and Phil into Larry – worked for David Stern.
Walt: Works in basketball because only two teams make the
finals – golf tournaments are so deep these days that anyone can win them – see
Ben Curtis, Shaun Micheel, and Michael Campbell for recent entrants into the “one-hit
wonder” club. Tim and the networks are
making the right call – might be the only call they could make, but they made
it.
Billy: Yeah, well if you'll excuse me I'm going to go check out some websites of Tiger's wife and master my own domain.
Walt: Wherever the over-sharing line is, you just crossed it. Taxi - take this man home!
