Women Almost Worth Watching: Not Heidi Bad, But Still Not Great
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When NBC sent the U.S. Women’s Open playoff to Golf Channel without warning and viewers went wild (as AA’s Jay Rigdon documents here), we were reminded of a few things:
NBC took back the USGA package from Fox and already had plenty on its plate (Belmont Stakes, French Open, Olympic trials, etc.).
It’s an Olympic year and NBC has far more invested in the Games build-up than in golf, so prime time gymnastics will always get the call. Fine, it’s a big business, it wasn’t supposed to be this year and we get the headaches involved in all of this except…
Women Worth Watching was pushed by the USGA and NBC. If you were on Twitter at all you’d know how relentless the staged messaging was. That should not have been pushed in an Olympic year when the network priorities lie elsewhere. (Perhaps incoming CEO Mike Whan can get that fixed down the road or revisit the U.S. Women’s Open date if it will continuously get squeezed on the schedule.)
The final round was already compromised when threesomes were sent off both tees much earlier than on Saturday. Players were asked to make a quick turnaround. All for television in the most important championship in the women’s game. Turns out, the Saturday schedule of some early NBC action followed by the evening conclusion on Golf Channel in ET prime time would have been better for the U.S. Women’s Open than what transpired Sunday.
Peacock was developed with a streaming future in mind and made part of the renegotiated Fox contract, so why not stream all of it there all the time so you can point to the app and say, “we are giving it all to you in once place while juggling an obviously busy sports schedule, we hope you understand.”
I wrote all of this in the Quadrilateral today, but I left out one other component of the bungled handoff which, let’s face, would have also been blasted if it were Fox or CBS doing the same thing.
After the two-hole aggregate playoff was tied, NBC went to its gymnastics coverage and sent the sudden death portion to Golf Channel as the players were teeing off. The network coverage did not have to sign off on the west coast. Gynmastics would be shown later on tape delay for the Pacific Time Zone.
In the past when CBS has sent delayed PGA Tour coverage to Golf Channel, they often stay live in the PT zone. So what happened on the western NBC stations showing the U.S. Women’s Open?
They went to infomercials in L.A.
And in San Francisco where the event was played?
Something called One Team: The Power of Sports. A show geared toward children. Thanks to readers M and K for sending the heads up.
Again, if the parties involved are sincere about “growing” the women’s game—ratings—and raising the profile of players, they have to back it up with decisions which make the viewing experience more sensible and respectful of the competition. Anything else means it’s just another synthetic messaging campaign.
**Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols wrote this about the scheduling, timing and NBC handling:
Moving away from a tournament like the Memorial is another important piece of the puzzle. There should be a significant push within the industry (that includes the PGA Tour) to align schedules to give the biggest women’s events the best possible chance at success.
That goes for TV too. There were great strides made this week at the Women’s Open with the addition of feature groups and the return of Golf Channel’s Live From. But the fact that the network TV window came and went on Saturday without showing a single shot from the leaders (it switched to Golf Channel), combined with Sunday’s final round missing primetime and forcing Sunday threesomes, is a giant weekend whiff.
