Finchem insists that he hasn't had any complaints from tournament sponsors about the new TV deal. On the issue of individual endorsements Joe Ogilvie, a player director on the PGA Tour policy board, says, "I have not heard about any push back on that. I think everyone was taking a wait-and-see attitude, and since Golf Channel has already started to prove itself as viable, it's become a nonissue."
Beyond the ratings, Golf Channel faced other perception problems. During the first three tournaments of the year — the Mercedes, the Sony Open and the Hope — live coverage was extended beyond the scheduled telecast window on five occasions, and a sixth bit of bonus time contained one of the most memorable events of the season: Tadd Fujikawa's star turn at the Sony.
In the second round Fujikawa, the amiable 16-year-old Hawaiian who was trying to become the youngest competitor to a make a cut on the Tour in 50 years, was sent off in the last pairing of the day.
The telecast ended with Fujikawa on the 16th hole, but from the Post Game Show studio in Orlando, Golf Channel kept cutting back to the action to keep viewers updated.
Thus fans watched live as Fujikawa made a thrilling eagle on the 18th hole to make the cut, setting off a madcap celebration. It was a textbook example of the flexibility and vitality Golf Channel can bring to its coverage.
However, beginning with the fourth event of the year, the Buick Invitational, the networks entered the mix. Whereas Golf Channel had supplied all the staff for the first three tournaments, now the producers, technicians, cameramen and a handful of announcers were network employees essentially being rented by Golf Channel for two days. And suddenly it seemed as if Golf Channel was no longer willing to stay on the air to chase the story.
On Friday at the Buick the telecast ended abruptly in favor of the Post Game Show as leader Brandt Snedeker was playing the 18th hole.
A few days later Phil Mushnick, the influential TV critic for the New York Post, wrote, "First time we saw a postgame show with the game still on!"
After a few more interrupted telecasts, Mushnick wrote one more in a string of acidic items: "For a third straight week the widespread and idyllic belief that Golf Channel, because it's Golf Channel, will stick with live coverage . . . has proven painfully false. Unless PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem steps in to fix this absurdity . . . we can only surmise he doesn't much care that Golf Channel doesn't serve viewers any better than if he'd made the deal with the Take A Hike Channel."
Just saying the word Mushnick around Golf Channel staffers makes their eyelids begin to twitch, and Manougian becomes animated in his defense of his network.
"We're Golf Channel — of course we want to stay on the air," he says. "That's what we do. But Thursday and Friday we don't control the telecasts, CBS or NBC does, and there's a huge amount of confusion over that."
Indeed there is. Lance Barrow, CBS's coordinating producer for golf, says, "It's their telecast — we're simply handling the technical side. We do what they want us to do."
