2012 Is Golf Channel's "Most-Watched Year Ever"

For Immediate Release...

ORLANDO, Fla. (Jan 3, 2012) – In 2012, Golf Channel scored its most-watched year ever in the near 18-year history of the network. This marked the second consecutive most-watched year after a record-breaking 2011. This continued surge in viewership since joining the NBC Sports Group early in 2011 has retained Golf Channel’s status as the fastest-growing network on U.S. television (among networks serving 80 million or more homes throughout that span), according to data released today by The Nielsen Company.
 
“We share in celebrating this milestone with our partners and most importantly, with our increasingly loyal family of viewers who have watched in record numbers to help us achieve these consecutive record-breaking years,” said Golf Channel President Mike McCarley.  “While we’re grateful for this recent success, we continue to set our goals high and are committed to serving our passionate fans with more and more high-quality golf content in the New Year and years to come.”

Does that mean they'll finally cancel the Big Break? As long the Montel Williams infomercials don't get moved, we're good.

Golf Channel averaged 95,000 viewers in 24-hour Total Day (6AM-6AM) during 2012, an increase of six percent more than a record-breaking 2011 (90,000) and 36 percent more than 2010 (70,000). Contributing to a banner 2012 were seven PGA TOUR events on Golf Channel reaching audiences in excess of 7 million unique viewers, led by the BMW Championship with 8.4 million unique viewers. Additionally, an unprecedented 14 million Golf Channel viewers watched some or all of the PGA TOUR Playoffs, which was the most-watched ever in the PGA TOUR Playoffs’ six-year history.
 
GOLF CHANNEL’S MOST-WATCHED YEAR EVER
2012 now represents Golf Channel’s most-watched year ever in its near 18-year history. Contributing to this milestone were the following achievements:
·        Three quarters in 2012 were most-watched quarters ever
·        Seven months in 2012 were most-watched months ever
·        100 days in 2012 were most-watched days ever
·        33 rounds or telecasts exceeded one million average viewers
·        115 additional rounds or telecasts exceeded a half million average viewers including coverage of PGA TOUR, European Tour, Champions Tour and LPGA Tour as well as several airings of Golf Channel’s signature news programming Golf Central and Live From.
 
FASTEST-GROWING NETWORK ON TELEVISION
Golf Channel continues to be the ‘fastest-growing network’ on television among all widely distributed networks (available in more than 80 million U.S. homes during that span) since joining the NBC Sports Group. Golf Channel in 2012 is up 36% vs. 2010 for average audience delivery.
 
GOLF CHANNEL DIGITAL SCORES BEST YEAR EVER
Mirroring Golf Channel’s success on-air, GolfChannel.com saw tremendous growth in 2012, setting best year ever marks for unique visitors (20.5 million, +60% vs. 2011), visits (41 million, +47% vs. 2011), and video starts (11 million, +45% vs. 2011). Golf Channel’s Apps garnered a 113% increase vs. 2011 with 145 million page views.
 
GOLF CHANNEL’S MOMENTUM SINCE JANUARY 2011
The momentum for Golf Channel has been building since becoming part of the NBC Sports Group in January 2011. A wide spectrum of tournament coverage, news and original programming has contributed to this success including:
 
Most-Watched Ever on Golf Channel:              vs. 2011      vs. 2010
Masters Week                                                     +40%          +22%
PLAYERS Week                                                    +42%          +13%
U.S. Open Week                                                  +31%          +40%
PGA TOUR Playoffs                                             +84%          +63%
Ryder Cup Week                                                                    +33%
 
High-Quality News and Original Programming: vs. 2011    vs. 2010
Monday Primetime                                             +23%          +26%
(includes Feherty, Haney Project and Big Break)
Golf Central                                                         +17%          +69%
Morning Drive                                                     +12%          +77%

That needs work.

On The Range                                                      +45%          + 7%
War By The Shore                   Most-watched documentary in network history (241,000 average viewers)

Wasn't it the first documentary?

Looks Like Golf Channel Needs A New Simulator

There goes the budget for Brandel's hair care products and Charlie Rymer's on-set tissues.

Long drive champ Jamie Sadlowski joined Gary Williams for a simulator competition. It didn't last long...

Jim Nantz Confirms He Gets "Hello Friends" All The Time And Talks About Life On The Peninsula

An unbylined Charlotte Observer Q&A with Jim Nantz (tied to Sunday's Panthers game) includes some fun stuff about revisiting his childhood home, fans saying "Hello Friends" to him (so original!), recording voiceovers for Tiger Woods' EA video game (Hello Friends!) and his move to Pebble Beach this year. 

Q. Is it true you live at Pebble Beach Golf Links?

I moved to Pebble Beach full time this year. I’m looking at the seventh green right now. It’s all beautiful. We got married June 9 and we moved in that very night.

Q. You got married in June on the famous seventh hole there. Why did you pick that spot?

In the book I wrote, “Always By My Side,” I wrote a couple of pages about how the seventh hole was such a spiritual setting to me and I always felt my father’s presence there. Every day during the years we covered the Pebble Beach golf tournament, I would march out there before the sun was up and sit on the rail fence there in prayerful introspection and think about all the blessings in my life.

Q. So how much golf do you play living there?

I’ve played twice since I moved here. I practice a lot.

Golf Channel Pausing Big Break Greenbrier Reruns To Re-Air The Best Of Tommy Gainey On Big Break IV & VII

Not to worry, the infomercials for Tommie Copper (hosted by Montel Williams!) and Total Gym Challenge (with Chuck and Christie!) will air in their traditional Tuesday time slots. Your DVR season passes or well-planned afternoon siestas remain intact.

However, Big Break Greenbrier reruns will be tabled to bring back PGA Tour winner Tommy Gainey's appearances on the fourth and seventh editions.

I know you've all seen these, but just in case you forgot, the recap:

Tuesday
4-5 p.m. ET – Big Break IV: USA vs. Europe (Episode six)– The fourth installment of Golf Channel’s reality competition series pitted teams of six golfers representing the United States and Europe.  In this episode, the contestants take a surprise field trip to the home of golf – St. Andrews – with challenges including hitting out of the infamous “Road Hole Bunker” on the 17th hole and putting out of the “Valley of Sin” on the 18th hole.  The episode also includes one of the more dramatic elimination challenges in series history on the 18th hole, when Tommy Gainey executed an unconventional bogey that featured a ricochet off of a van and a complete miss from the rough to stay alive on the series before ultimately being eliminated in a sudden-death playoff.  Big Break IV: USA vs. Europe was filmed at Carnoustie Golf Links and aired on Golf Channel in 2005.
 
5-6 p.m. ET – Big Break VII: Reunion (Finale) – The seventh installment of Golf Channel’s reality competition series featured the first-ever reunion show, bringing back 16 competitors from the series’ first six seasons.  The finale of Big Break VII: Reunion featured Tommy Gainey defeating Ashley Gomes in a nine-hole match to be crowned series champion and the recipient of a tournament exemption to the 2007 Cox Classic, $70,000 in cash and prizes and a new Chrysler Aspen.  Big Break VII: Reunion was filmed at Reunion Resort near Orlando, Fla., and aired on Golf Channel in 2007.

PGA Tour Ratings '12: NBC Pulls Well Ahead Of CBS

Sports Business Daily's Austin Karp sums up the PGA Tour's numbers rising in 2012, with NBC showing a 45% increase (3.43 avg viewers) and CBS a 20% spike (2.75 million). Golf Channel was up 23% with a average of 847,000 viewers.

But check out the chart with Karp's item. It includes 2011 numbers, where NBC and CBS posted nearly identical average viewer numbers (2.3 million for NBC to 2.2 million for CBS).

I'd be curious to see if this lead in 2012 is the product of CBS having more telecasts and a few rainouts, or perhaps the NBC-Golf Channel synergy providing better promotion and telecast lead-ins?

The Lee Corso Ad ESPN Ran 18 Times And Other Atrocities Brought To You By The PGA Of America

To be clear, the mostly NBC produced pictures, sound and announcing from Friday's Ryder Cup made the fantastic golf that much better.

Unfortunately, over the course of 11.5 hours, we were actually deprived of coverage.

We all know they have bills to pay, but showing a promo 18 times over the course of 11.5 hours? Obnoxious.

The primary atrocity committed by ESPN and the PGA of America was the call in three instances to leave live, thrilling Ryder Cup golf. Twice they showed a Scott Van Pelt narrated highlight package and most painful of all, an interview with PGA of America president Allen Wronowski that not a single person on the planet wanted or needed to hear.

John Strege noted the intrusions in his media column.

Thankfully, the Sky Sports feed was online (thanks reader Tim) and showed twice as much golf with solid commentary from Butch Harmon and Colin Montgomerie, among others.

Too many times in the past decade the PGA of America has shown a complete lack of interest in requiring their partners to present a fluid telecast and instead allows networks like ESPN to run every promo imaginable without regard for the viewer. (Including on-air spots read by the announcers plugging broadcasts competing with Saturday's Ryder Cup telecast.)

The agony was compounded by the unwatchable RyderCup.com stream, which was avoiding competing with ESPN's telecast, leaning heavily on pre-packaged highlights and full screen graphics.

For the 19th and final time (hopefully), the Lee Corso spot...

Review & DVR Alert: War By The Shore

With the captivating documentary War By The Shore, core golf fans will have one less thing to bemoan about Golf Channel's neglect of the game's rich history. In yet another shining example of the Comcast/NBC merger benefiting golf fans, this artfully produced film takes full advantage of NBC's original 1991 Ryder Cup footage and intermixes the highlights with historic photos and an extensive mix of interviewees to relive one of the most thrilling events the game has ever witnessed. Beyond retelling the story of an epic match, the 51-minute Ross Greenburg produced documentary makes an open-and-shut case for this as the transcendent event in the Ryder Cup. And maybe even in golf's place in the network pecking order.

Directed and edited by George Roy from a script by Steve Stern, the first nine minutes are devoted to the Jack Nicklaus-inspired 1979 switch to a competition against a team from Continental Europe. By 1987 when the Europeans dominated at Muirfield Village and Jose Maria Olazabal broke out in a celebratory dance across Muirfield Village's 18th green, there was "bad blood" and the arrogance was viewed as an "affront" to the Americans, Paul Azinger says in the film.  A 1989 tie was remembered mostly for Captain Ray Floyd's "twelve best golfers in the world" remark at the opening ceremony. Throw in a testosterone boost from the Gulf War even though the U.S. and Europe were allies, and the stage was set for the 1991 event at Kiawah Island's Ocean Course.

The early week antics recalled in the Peter Coyote-narrated film are many, from footage of the opening dinner (everyone had so much hair and Sir Nick had such lovely highlights!), the Steve Pate limo accident (didn't need to see Pate shirtless though) and even the traditionally-diplomatic President George Bush giving a pro-American taped message shown at the dinner (he refers to the bi-annual matches…nice job presidential speechwriters!). It all eventually pales compared to the on-course dramatics: Seve Ballesteros coughing-in Chip Beck's backswing, the ball compression controversy between Azinger and Seve, and even Azinger suggesting teammate Corey Pavin's ode-to-the-troops camouflage hats "crossed the line" (now we know why the two eventual Captains weren't sharing many notes in 2010!). The combination of rarely seen footage, fresh memories and a nice cross section of players and media interviewed, makes for terrific television. (Included is Curt Sampson, who has a new book on the matches. Excerpt here.)

One pleasant surprise to even this viewer--who was glued to the whole thing live and still has VHS copies of all three days--was the reminder that this was a breakthrough television event. The first Ryder Cup aired on network television, NBC's Dick Ebersol made a bold decision to stay with Saturday's Fred Couples/Payne Stewart v. Olazabal/Ballesteros match a whopping 90 minutes into American prime time. The resulting match, played in stunning late light on an Ocean Course that was firm, infinitely more fascinating and aesthetically rugged back then, set the stage for Sunday's singles while introducing a new audience to emotion-fueled golf like no one had ever seen.

For the final day, the film glosses over the decision by Pate to not play due to the car accident injury and instead focuses on the two matches everyone involved will forever remember: Mark Calcaveccia's meltdown against Colin Montgomerie and the finale between Bernhard Langer and Hale Irwin. We learn that Monty was going to concede a short putt to Calc after the "smother top" into the par-3 17th hole's lake, but then something urged him to resist and Calc missed, sending the match to the home hole. Then there was that unforgettable finish between Irwin and Langer which, while getting the full treatment, doesn't feel quite as dramatic as it did in last Tuesday's re-airing of the original telecast. Still, it's a minor quibble as the Greenburg team packed a lot of into 51 minutes of gripping and never dull Ryder Cup memories.

War By The Shore airs Tuesday, September 25th at 9 p.m. ET on Golf Channel. Here's a preview:

Consolation: Berman Also Disliked When Announcing The NFL

ESPN put Chris Berman on a Monday night Chargers-Raiders game and the reviews were almost as brutal as his golf announcing, which we learned last week, we'll be enduring on the U.S. Open weekday coverage for the foreseeable future.

From Sports Business Daily's wrap up:

The Dallas Morning News' Evan Grant wrote, "Holy moly, the Raiders are a disaster. They are not, however, as much of a disaster as Berman on the stick." Sirius XM Radio's Eddie Borsilli wrote, "There are no words for what's happening in this game. But I could do without Berman and his stupid comments. Go circle the wagons." The Louisville Courier-Journal's Tim Sullivan wrote, "First Chris Berman, then Stuart Scott, and me without a mute button. Oh, the price we pay to watch pro football." CBSSports.com's Will Brinson wrote, "Not often watching football feels like a chore. 1AM + Boomer + … this is one of those times."

Johnny: I Declined Chance To Work With Tiger; But Now I'm Open To The Idea!

Johnny Miller says he was once asked to coach Tiger by Tiger's "people" but Johnny turned the job down.

From the October Golf Magazine:

"Not many people know this, but when Tiger had been on Tour for two or three years, his people called and asked if I would give him lessons on short irons," Miller said. "Jack Nicklaus told him I was the best short iron play ever—a pretty great compliment."

Miller said he declined to offer because of his NBC announcing work and his desire to spend time with his children and grandchildren.

"I was tired," Miller said. "I didn't think I could give him the time he'd need, so I turned him down, which I don't think many people have done."

And now?

"He's the guy I'd like to help most," Miller said. "I've been watching him since he was in junior golf. I know all the swings he's had. I think I could help him get back to his natural swing, not the swing someone else wants him to make. I'm open to helping him."

Tiger, have your people call Johnny's people and let's make this made-for-TV goldmine a go!