Every year April brings with it a few traditions: birds come back from a winter down South, flowers bloom for the first time in ages and I will complain about the coverage of The Masters on television. You see, the people in charge of the tournament don't want it or the club to be over-exposed and because of this they really fight to control how many hours of TV the networks are allowed to have. To make sure the math works and they don't miss anything which happens that day, the networks are forced to pretty much ignore the first few hours of play every day. What viewers end up with instead is nothing but a lot of leader board graphic updates, which helps no one. On previous occasions I have compared it to the feeling of watching a pre-game show which is still on the air after the game has started. You appreciate their effort to keep you informed, but most of us really would just rather see the event with our own eyes. Every single year it is an exercise in frustration. Fortunately, The Masters is the only tournament which has this kind of policy, as the people in charge of the rest of golf's majors are only to happy to let the networks carry as much golf as they want (ESPN had roughly 17 hours of coverage today). The problem is that hasn't stopped some of the other networks from continuing with the extra-long pre-game show.
I feel bad for the Golf Channel, really I do. They are the GOLF channel, yet they don't have any broadcasting rights to the four majors of the year, also known as the highest-rated tournaments all year. All season they bring you exclusive coverage of just about every tournament on just about every tour, but when it comes time for the national spotlight, the big boys like ESPN and TNT come in and steal their thunder. (The fact that TNT has the rights has to especially hurt. You can pretty much expect to lose the bidding for the broadcast rights to a sporting event to ESPN, because sports is all they do. But to lose the chance to show a golf major to the network which is normally best known for showing "Road House" every other day has got to sting.) Even when their parent company, NBC, has a tournament they don't always let the Golf Channel show the early wave of players, splitting it with other networks under the NBC umbrella. The Golf Channel loves to tell you they are the best place for everything you need during major tournaments... except for, you know, the actual tournament. That tends to be a rather large hole in coverage.
There is a show on the Golf Channel called "Morning Drive". Normally as I go through my normal morning routine, I like to have the Golf Channel on in the background, specifically this show. Most people may prefer to start their day with actual news, but I pretty much just want sports and since I usually watch SportsCenter right before bed, there isn't much new for me to learn from them in the morning. Also, unlike national shows such as "Mike & Mike", I know with this show I don't have to worry about a 20 minutes discussion concerning the Kansas City Royals trade options hijacking my morning. (I'm the typical provincial New Englander. If the team isn't from here I don't care about them.) "Morning Drive" is a nice alternative of guys sitting around and talking about golf, giving a few tips and having some laughs. Seriously, hosting this show would pretty much be my dream job. That being said, this morning I just felt bad for them. Coverage of the British Open started on ESPN at about 4:30 in the morning and they didn't come on until 6. That meant they were over an hour behind and were expected to spend the next four hours talking about what was happening on another network, one most golf fans could and had already flipped over to.
From my time in college radio I know a little something about what it is like to do a show while being very aware that no one is paying attention. You feel both annoyed that the world is ignoring your hard work, but strangely relieved that no one is going to call you on your screw-ups. It's a very odd mix of emotions. I eventually made my peace with doing shows pretty much for my own entertainment, but it has to sting for these guys, especially since they normally have an audience. (In my case you can't miss what you never had.) The few times I flipped over during commercial breaks you could almost see behind their eyes the hosts were thinking, "There is no one paying attention to this. We could say anything right now. I bet I could start swearing and no one would even complain." But, no one ever did as they dutifully went back to trying to describe the amazing shot I had just seen before I changed the channel. Mercifully, when I switched back later in the afternoon the Golf Channel had switched away from their live coverage and started showing some original programming instead. I can only hope that they have the good sense to make the switch a little earlier in the day tomorrow.
