MorningRead.com: "Changes at Golf Channel could get a fuzzy reception"

Thanks to all who sent in John Hawkins’s Morning Read look at the pending downscaling of Golf Channel and demise of GolfChannel.com. I held off on posting the story while awaiting comment on the recent building closure and ensuing disappearance of all studio shows. While a network spokesman has not been able to give an answer about what was happening, channel listings do show Morning Drive and Golf Central returning next week. At least, for the time being. (Before a scaling back when the network moves to Stamford, Connecticut for “geographic consolidation” and tax breaks with one studio show covering pre and post games.)

Multiple sources say the headquarters, closed to ensure safe working conditions after a class action suit was filed against the neighboring Lockheed Martin facility, will reopen next week, while GolfChannel.com has received a very slight reprieve from the expected year-end shuttering first reported on by The Athletic.

Hawkins writes:

The layoffs were made public in June, to be conducted in a two-stage process, and that process is still shaking itself out. The coronavirus hasn’t made things any easier. Nor has a class-action lawsuit involving 11 Golf Channel employees and defense company Lockheed Martin, which owns a plant near the GC complex and is accused in a class-action lawsuit of instigating an “environmental nightmare” with its alleged mismanagement of hazardous toxins.

A source with close knowledge of the case confirmed today that the Golf Channel employee portion of the case has swelled to “about 100” plaintiffs from the 11 originally reported by the Orlando Sentinel.

I repeat: about 100 from 11 just since the Sentinel revealed the suit less than a month ago.

Thoughts and prayers.

Anyway, on a lighter note…

At least one industry insider will tell you that the company began reaching beyond its core audience at a time when its TV rights would come at a substantially higher price, which apparently was the case when the PGA Tour completed negotiations with all of its suitors this spring. ESPN was awarded the digital/streaming rights through 2030, a coveted property, given that so many viewers have taken to watching pro golf on something other than a television.

One correction here and it is a mistake commonly made: ESPN+ will have the rights to what is now PGA Tour Live coverage and miscellaneous featured hole and group feeds. GOLFTV, for those who insist it is a real thing, handles international streaming rights.

However, when Golf Channel’s opening round coverage is on cable Thursdays and Fridays, they retain those digital rights through 2031.

When CBS and NBC are televising, their digital platforms own those rights exclusively as well, not ESPN+.

From a fan and business perspective, NBC’s interest currently lies in its Peacock streaming service—home apparently to 30 Rock reruns in case you had not heard 400 times—as it winds down cable channels. Nothing suggests a large part of golf’s core audience is even remotely prepared for such a move.

Golf Channel ended up paying more for something it already had – something that could be worth less in nine years than it is now. Without live golf as the nucleus of its programming, however, the network’s value would be greatly diminished. It had little choice but to meet the Tour’s financial demands.

True. The real question is how the PGA Tour, the R&A, PGA of America, LPGA, European Tour and now the USGA, feel about handing over coverage hours to a channel where they’re barely turning on the lights and have had late-blooming digital strategy?

Then again, the PGA Tour world has shown a belief in their “product” strength that far exceeds common sense wisdom which says viewers invest in players, courses and weeks in part because of the storytelling around those events.