Fox Wants AT&T U-Verse To Pay More To Show USGA Events

Variety's Brian Steinberg reports that Fox Sports 1 and AT&T U-Verse are in a battle that may cost the cable server's 6 million homes a chance to watch eight USGA events.

At issue is Fox Sports 1 adding many rights (fees) that did not exist prior to the last agreement with AT&T, so Fox is threatening not to beam, say, the USGA Four-Ball and other recently acquired packages like NASCAR to AT&T U-Verse customers. The blackout of select content provides a new twist in the various cable company spats with content providers.

In the current fight, Fox Sports 1 is trying to get paid for programming that was not in place when its carriage deal with AT&T was established. Nascar signed a new deal in 2013 that moved its events to Fox and NBC from Walt Disney’s ESPN and Time Warner’s Turner Sports for this year. Many of the other events at the center of the new dispute were also added to Fox Sports 1 after it secured carriage rights.

AT&T U-verse has approximately 6 million subscribers, according to market research firm SNL Kagan.

Fox Sports 1 said it had made “attempts to negotiate an agreement that extends to these events.” Unless each side’s stance changes, U-verse subscribers may miss out on a Nascar race tomorrow.

And the U.S. Junior Amateur!

Fox Sports signed a 12-year (12 years!) rights deal with the USGA in August, 2013, but this is the first time since handing the USGA a lavish sum that there has been any sign of squeezing cable companies for the privilege of showing USGA championships. Something tells me the AT&T folks aren't going to budge on this one for a while.

Golf Channel Prez On Ratings, More College Golf & Protracer

Golfweek's Martin Kaufman sits Golf Channel President Mike McCarley down for a three-part interview as part of the channel's 20th anniversary celebration. Part one is here, part two and part three.

Most interesting were his comments on ratings and Tiger in 2014.

GWK:Tiger Woods has been the big ratings driver. How do you feel about golf as we’re beginning to approach the post-Tiger era.

McCarley: This year was a great example. Tiger was out for basically his entire season, and for Golf Channel, the rating for the year was exactly the same as it was last year, which was the best year in the history of the network. That’s a testament to a lot of things. There’s a lot of programming and production changes and improvements that have been made that are reflected in those numbers. And two, there are a lot of things in the game that are working well. The LPGA had a terrific year. There are things like the Drive, Chip & Putt, which was new. The NCAA Championships were back on TV. The “Arnie” documentary (aired).

We had the highest-rated April in the history of the network, and there was no Tiger in April at all.

McCarley explains the channel's interest in college golf after years of not showing much:

One area where we’ll focus more because it’s an important piece of the fabric of the game is youth. So what we did this year with the NCAA (Championships) got a lot of people’s attentions, we saw a really nice lift in ratings, but more importantly we introduced the stars of the professional tours to the audience at a younger age. And hopefully that will start to make those kids more recognizable, so they . . . arrive on the professional scene with more cachet. I think college golf has been an overlooked and under-covered part of the game, and a lot of that is on us. We’re diving in and the response we’ve gotten from both the college golf community, the professional tours and the industry as a whole has been really positive.

The other topic of interest for those who (like me) want more Protracer will get it in 2015.

I think Protracer has been terrific, and we’re going to have Protracer at nearly 40 events this year – not only using it in tournament coverage but in our news coverage. One of the most interesting news shows we had (in 2014) was one of the pregame shows from Doral when Tiger was on the range and we had Protracer, and you were seeing the ball go left and right, and really didn’t know what was going on with this guy. Later that day, he had to get out of the event because of his back. There’s something weirdly mesmerizing about watching the path of the ball flight, especially when the players are on the range and are working on things. And there will be more things like that.