TV talks starts at right time for PGA Tour
By RON SIRAK
AP Golf Writer
When the PGA Tour and TV bosses sit down next week to start
putting a price tag on professional golf in the years after 1998,
the key words thrown around the bargaining table will likely be
demographics, ratings and Tiger Woods.
Other concepts certain to creep into the discussions will include
staying with the event until it's over, restructuring golf to
include more worldwide events and - for the PGA Tour - bigger
bucks.
"You can draw your own conclusions," John Morris,
the PGA Tour's vice president for communications, said this week
when asked if the tour was in a good bargaining position.
"It's a very exciting time for golf. Golf makes money
for TV."
For PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, who is determined to
boost purses to the point where the leading money winner makes
more than a backup shortstop, the TV talks could not come at a
better time.
Golf already was on an upswing as baby boomers entering middle
age began looking for an outlet for competitive urges once satisfied
by more exhausting sports.
Then Woods came along and thrust the game onto the front pages
of newspapers and magazines, and made it the lead item of TV sports
shows.
The tour's agreements with its TV partners expire at the end
of the 1998 season and, according to Morris, the tour wants to
have contract talks wrapped up by the end of next month.
The touchy thing for the networks is to gauge exactly how big
golf will be more than 18 months from now when the new contracts
kick in.
Will Tigermania have people watching golf on TV in record numbers,
or will his novelty have worn off and the public grown tired of
watching him win?
One thing TV ratings seem to indicate this year is that the
Woods phenomenon has created enormous interest in him but not
a significant bump in golf ratings overall.
Ratings for the Masters were up 53 percent over 1996 as 44
million people tuned in to see Woods' record-setting victory.
But the 14.1 rating on Sunday at Augusta dwindled to 2.7 without
Woods the following week at the MCI Classic, a 6 percent decline
from the previous year.
In fact, six of 11 events shown this year on network TV had
lower ratings for the Sunday final round than last year and a
seventh showed no change.
Five of those events (the Hope, Doral, Honda, Freeport and
MCI) did not have Woods. He played in the other two (the Nissan
Open and the Players Championship) but was not in contention on
Sunday.
Two other events in which Woods played - the Mercedes and Pebble
Beach - do not translate for comparison since the Sunday round
at the Mercedes was rained out this year and Pebble Beach was
rained out last year.
"The report card is incomplete at this point," Rob
Correa, the CBS Sports vice president for programming, said about
the impact of Woods. "We think we will see it in the future.
For it to be a factor, he has to be on the leaderboard on the
weekend."
"We get Tiger and other big names in the hunt Sunday afternoon
and golf is a different sport in America for those few hours,"
he said.
Morris said preliminary talks with the networks were under
way, and one source closely involved in the talks said negotiations
begin in earnest next week.
Morris indicated the most important TV number for the tour
is not the number of people it is reaching but the spending power
of those people.
"We don't dwell on ratings," Morris said. "We
think the golf audience is solid and is a very discerning group
for advertisers. We are not in the ratings game. If we were, there
would not be as much golf on TV."
"We've tried to maximize the audience for golf by making
it convenient to watch," Morris said.
The tour has shown it has no problem reaching its target audience
without Woods. Ratings for the Buick Invitational in early February
were up 17 percent and the Hawaiian Open the next week had a 5
percent ratings increase, both without Woods.
The Hawaiian Open also raised another issue when ABC left after
two holes of the four-hole playoff to show "America's Funniest
Home Videos."
"We do have a concern and that concern has been addressed
with the network," Morris said. "Obviously, it will
be a point of discussion during our next contract talks,"
he said, stressing that ABC had met its contractual obligations
in its coverage.
Those contractual obligations - and the price tag - should
be stiffer when the current talks are concluded.
|
