"We want viewers on their couch to feel as if they're right there at the event..."

I was starting to think the new most powerful man in golf, Mike McCarley (sorry Tim), was going to share more stuff about cross-pollinizing core values with brand scatter metrics, but it appears he's actually thinking about how to make golf more exciting and watchable on television. Really!

John Paul Newport, writing for the WSJ about the Golf Channel/NBC partnership and what it means.

On the production side, McCarley said his mandate was to incorporate more of the NBC "sports sensibility" into Golf Channel's programming. "There's a lot of nuance to it, a lot of storytelling, which comes down from [pioneering producer] Roone Arledge at ABC Sports, where Ebersol used to work," he said. That style, occasionally melodramatic, also characterizes NBC's coverage of the Olympics. "We want viewers on their couch to feel as if they're right there at the event, in the front row," he said.

As one example, he liked the way Golf Channel last summer at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach had its pregame commentators on the putting green. "I called Ebersol, I said, 'Are you watching this?

And Dick said, uh no Mike I'm at The Lodge enjoying a $200 bottle of wine, isn't this something that could wait?

It's great. You can feel the excitement, the anticipation.' We want to do more like that," he said. In its early years, Golf Channel productions resembled public-access cable more than network broadcasts, but it has raised the bar, and is now fully HD.

I guess he hasn't watched any LPGA or Nationwide events lately.

McCarley also wants to limit more commercial breaks to two minutes or less. "The average time between a drive and a second shot is two minutes and 15 seconds to two minutes and 30 seconds. So you want to get back from commercial to watch the second shot live. That's important to the feel and flow of the broadcast," he said.

As long as we don't shorten the break and make up for it with on-air promos!