Tuesday, May 9, 2000
Tiger on the course puts fans in front
of TV
By Barry Horn
The Dallas Morning News
(KRT)
DALLAS — Back this week after a month-long hiatus comes the
hottest singular entity in television sports programming: Tiger
TV. The offering stars Tiger Woods with his fellow members of
the PGA Tour playing supporting roles.
There are three sure ratings grabbers in television today. The
GTE Byron Nelson Classic doesn't have an “E.R.” Nor
will Regis Philbin be staked out at the 18th hole asking already
millionaire golfers, “Final answer?” But the Nelson
does have Tiger Woods playing in his first PGA Tour event since
the Masters in early April.
Of course, if Woods is to play Saturday and Sunday on CBS, there
is the matter of his making the cut. Woods, however, has not had
too many problems navigating the Nelson's TPC Four Seasons and
Cottonwood Valley courses. Woods has played in three Nelsons since
turning pro late in the 1996 season. He won the tournament in
1997 and has finished 12th and seventh the last two years.
“Tiger single-handedly can move a rating on a Sunday 40 percent
to 50 percent,” said Rob Correa, vice president of programming
for CBS Sports, which has the Nelson as well as next week's MasterCard
Colonial, which, alas, will be Tiger-free. “No other athlete
in any other sport can have the impact he does, let alone another
golfer.”
Woods' presence on a weekend leaderboard has come to mean what
the Cowboys do to Super Bowl ratings and Michael Jordan once did
to NBC's NBA telecasts; it guarantees added eyeballs in front
of television sets from coast to coast.
“Tiger transcends core audiences,” said Ken Schanzer,
the president of NBC Sports, who had a courtside seat for most
of the Jordan era on the network.
In other words, PGA Tour events that don't include Woods or where
Woods isn't in contention are usually good for a Saturday rating
of about a 2.0 and a Sunday number in the neighborhood of a 3.0.
With each rating point representing about 1 million homes, networks
are happy to attract the same 3 million hard-core golf viewers
every Sunday.
Now, consider the Woods factor. Last year, CBS, ABC and NBC averaged
a 4.1 rating for the Saturdays and Sundays of tournaments that
included Woods. That was 41 percent higher than the ratings from
the tournaments that he skipped.
Woods has been in contention in six tournaments this year, according
to research by CBS. Those are defined as tournaments in which
he finished no lower than fifth place. He finished 18th in one
tournament and has skipped nine others.
The tournaments with Woods in contention — including the
always highly rated Masters, in which he finished fifth —
averaged a 5.0 rating. The ones without Woods averaged a 2.6.
“That's what makes Tiger such an asset,” Schanzer said.
TV executives at the PGA Tour's three network partners have all
feasted at Tiger's table.
When Woods won the rain-plagued AT&T Pebble Beach National
Pro Am in early February, CBS managed an impressive 3.9 rating
for Sunday's third-round coverage.
The next week, Woods finished in a second-place tie with Japan's
Shigeki Maruyama at San Diego's Buick Invitational behind Phil
Mickelson. CBS enjoyed an 8.0 Sunday rating as Woods, going for
his seventh consecutive PGA Tour victory, made his patented Sunday
charge. That night, the NBA played its All-Star Game in prime
time. It hobbled in with a 6.9 rating, meaning about 1.1 million
fewer homes were interested in Vince Carter, Allen Iverson, Kevin
Garnett, Tim Duncan et al., than Woods and company.
No doubt, Woods' win streak peaked interest. The rating for the
Buick Invitational was higher than the ratings for 1999's U.S.
Open, British Open and the Woods-won PGA Championship. Only the
two Masters have posted higher Sunday ratings in the past 14 months
(10.1 and 10.0).
But those ratings pale with the Sunday number from the 1997 Masters,
when Woods blew away the field with his magical 18-under-par 270.
The 14.1 rating, like Woods' 12-stroke victory, is a Masters record.
It was 2.2 ratings points better than the previous high set in
1975, when Jack Nicklaus beat Johnny Miller and Tom Weiskopf by
one stroke.
The week after Woods finished second to Mickelson, he trailed
leader David Sutherland by three strokes going into final round
play at Los Angeles' Nissan Open. Sunday's CBS coverage attracted
a 5.1 rating as Kirk Triplett came on to win and Woods dropped
into a tie for 18th place.
“Tiger doesn't have to win to draw a big audience,”
said Dan Hicks, NBC Sports' golf anchor. “He just has to
be in contention and be there on Sunday for people to watch.”
Like at the Andersen Consulting Match Play Championship again
the next week. Matched for 36 holes against Northern Ireland's
Darren Clarke, Woods finished second. Still, ABC's 5.0 rating
for the event defeated a NBA tripleheader on NBC that included
the much ballyhooed network debut of Toronto Raptors star Vince
Carter. Carter scored 51 points and was drubbed in the ratings
by Woods.
The previous year, Jeff Maggert beat Andrew Magee for the match-play
championship. Maggert and Magee played before a TV audience that
was 40 percent smaller than the one that tuned into see Woods
and Clarke.
In March, when the PGA Tour moved to Florida and Georgia, coverage
shifted to NBC. Woods skipped three tournaments — the Doral-Ryder
Open, the Honda Classic and the BellSouth Classic. The three tournaments'
Sunday ratings averaged a 3.0.
In between, Woods won at the Bay Hill Invitational, where the
Sunday rating was a 4.7.
His victory at Bay Hill was his first on NBC. Given that golfers
can tend to be superstitious, NBC breathed a sigh of relief. “What
if he decided NBC was a jinx?” analyst Johnny Miller said.
“Let's just say we were happy he broke the drought.”
Perhaps more impressive than the 4.7 rating that Woods earned
in victory was the 4.4 rain-marred Sunday rating for The Players
Championship, where Woods finished second when the tournament
was completed the next day. For most of Sunday afternoon, the
4.4 million homes that tuned into NBC were treated to highlights
from Woods' third round, which had already been televised on Saturday.
In the Tiger-free four weeks leading up to the Nelson, the PGA
pulled average ratings of 2.1 on Saturdays and 2.8 on Sundays.
Executives at CBS, NBC and ABC all insist that they do not alter
their coverage in homage to Woods' drawing ability.
Still...
Mike Tirico, who anchors ABC's golf coverage, said that when Woods
is in the hunt, producers and directors at his network “will
show his shot going to commercial to plant the seed of coming
back to see more of him.”
NBC's Hicks says the executives back in New York are not realistic.
“Ask any network golf crew, and they will all say they cover
him differently,” Hicks said. “That's because he is
never out of it.
“He has the capability of coming back from five, six, seven
shots behind,” he said. “We have to show him at those
points even if we wouldn't show others.”
Hicks said special coverage of Woods is such a given that it is
no longer discussed in the production meetings on the eve of a
tournament.
“We have two assigned walkers,” Hicks said, referring
to on-course reporters. “It is a given that one will be with
Tiger. The only question is which player our other walker will
follow.”
Indeed, at the Masters, CBS kept its focus on Woods throughout
Sunday's final round. The network showed all but two of his shots
after the telecast opened with Woods at the seventh hole. Beginning
with the 14th hole, viewers didn't miss a single stroke by Woods
even after a bogey at 16 dropped him five shots behind eventual
winner Vijay Singh.
Lance Barrow, the coordinating producer who oversees CBS' golf
coverage, called the shots at Augusta just as he will at the Nelson.
He believes that as long as Woods is on the golf course, he is
part of the story of the day.
“He is until the last shot drops,” Barrow said. “He
makes unbelievable comebacks and unbelievable shots. . . . If
Tiger is on the golf course, there definitely will be cameras
with Tiger. I don't care where he is in the tournament.”
No other player on the PGA Tour merits such coverage, Barrow said.
Network executives who more often than not are only too happy
to criticize their competitors coverage of the NFL, NBA, NHL and
Major League Baseball, hold their tongues when the subject is
Tiger Woods.
Since CBS, NBC and ABC all get to exploit Woods' heroics, they
cannot be critical of each other. Nor do they pick at each others'
PGA Tour ratings.
“I root for Tiger no matter on whose network he is playing
because of the impact he has on the game,” said Correa, the
CBS Sports vice president of programming. “We are the primary
beneficiary of that impact because we have more tournaments than
the others.”
Said NBC's Schanzer: “In golf, we are dealing with a sport
that is healthy now in terms of ratings, sales and growth. And
Tiger Woods is a great piece of that. For that we are grateful
to him.”
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