The PGA Tour has "streamlined" its television partners and tethered itself to cable, but the "continuity" of the commissioner's Masters envy remains intact.
Tim Finchem, sounding as if he had just revealed the greatest television relationship in the history of sports, announced Wednesday new six-year agreements with network partners CBS and NBC and exclusive cable rights for the next 15 years with niche entity The Golf Channel.
He also confirmed that the tour's flagship event - The Players Championship - will move to May and its spot on the tail end of the Florida swing will be filled by a reformatted World Golf Championships event at Doral.
While the Players finally gets out of the preview shadow of the Masters Tournament and into a month of its own, it steals a page from the Augusta National TV playbook by limiting hourly commercial interruption to no more than five minutes and three sponsors.
Finchem, it seems, will not rest until he forces everyone to consider his tournament a major championship on par with the Masters. Good luck with that.
This all but caps a wholesale shakeup of the makeup of the PGA Tour that had apparently grown too big for its own good - at least from a television standpoint. All that's left is the official release of the modified 2007 schedule which will include a few new pieces in new places.
You have to applaud the initiative the PGA Tour has taken to position itself in the burgeoning sports marketplace. Creation of a new late-season series, shortening of the full-season schedule, shuffling its biggest tournament
properties and maintaining the corporate support that keeps the whole thing afloat was a massive undertaking.
But it's not without risk. By next year up to 11 full events will be relegated to the exclusive domain of cable television - and hardly to a cable giant.
The whole new arrangement has its pluses and minuses.
Good news: Johnny Miller will get to torment tour players with his candid analysis twice as often - 10 events.
Better news: More comic relief from David Feherty, with CBS expanding its dominant golfing foothold from 16 to 19 events - not including its annual foray into our fair city for the Masters.
Bad news: No more Paul Azinger and Nick Faldo, the most dynamic duo in golf analysis. ABC and its cable partner ESPN are completely out of the golf mix except for the British Open.
Really bad news: Too much Craig Kann and the rest of The Golf Channel's current crop of low-rent personnel.
A lot of questions are still unanswered. Where is Judy Rankin going? Will Ian Baker-Finch have to start playing golf again for a living? Is Lanny Wadkins going to continue to lull us to sleep 20 weekends a year?
Despite the TV execs hailing the "responsible and profitable" nature of the new contract (read: cheaper for them), Finchem said the deal will generate an average 35 percent increase in revenue from 2007-12. That means the players can count on purses holding steady if not increasing as sharply as the past eight years.
Finchem and his new TV partners can talk all they want about "streamlining" and "continuity" for fans, but the fact of the matter is they've lost a tremendous promotional element without ESPN having any real vested interest in the tour.
To use another Finchem word, that loss is "impactful." Gone are all the cross-promotional elements to a sporting audience that isn't already focused on golf.
Instead, in some areas you'll have to pony up more money to your cable or satellite provider to get The Golf Channel to watch any weekday coverage of every PGA Tour event.
The Golf Channel will handle all of the coverage of the PGA Tour's opening stretch from the Mercedes Championships to the Sony Open in Hawaii to the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. Talk about coming in under the radar.
That said, the biggest winner in all of this is The Golf Channel. After 11 years it finally has something tangible to establish itself as a real player at golf's highest level.
Hopefully the investment they've made will be translated into a better on-air product.
"We are absolutely delighted with the results of these negotiations," Finchem said.
The rest of us can hold off on our delight until we see the results.
Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.
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