Category: Golf on TV

From humble beginnings, Golf Channel celebrates 25 years

Golf Channel was an audacious idea 25 years ago that has changed viewing habits and become part of the very fabric of the game.

Happy 25th birthday, Golf Channel.

On Jan. 17, 1995, the first 24-hour single-sport station launched in a mere 10,000 households, capitalizing on the cable-TV boom.

President George H.W. Bush spoke the network’s very first words, welcoming “his fellow Americans and fellow golfers to this special occasion” before handing off to hosts Lynda Cardwell and Brian Hammons, who took the reins for two hours of live programming, beginning at 7 p.m.

Golf Channel has changed the way golf fans consume the game and paved the way for the eventual creation of the NFL Network as well as MLB, NBA and NHL channels. It has grown from just 15 hours of live programming in the network’s first week (the 1995 Dubai Desert Classic was the first televised event) to more than 100 live hours from three U.S. time zones and five countries this week.

A 24-hour golf channel was the brainchild of Joe Gibbs, a Birmingham businessman who made his fortune in cable and cellular phones, and partnered with Arnold Palmer, who gave instant credibility to an idea that drew more than a few snickers. One writer called it “24 hours of chubby guys in bad clothes” and another claimed, “We’ve already got C-SPAN.”

“There were plenty of questions about who’s going to watch it?” recalled ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt, who got his start in TV as a production associate working in Golf Channel’s video library. “We kind of figured it out as we went.”

Despite the skepticism and resistance from investors, Gibbs forged ahead in selling his vision. He touted an audience of 25 million golfers and conducted a national survey that suggested there were more than 44 million golf fans that would be interested in tuning in.

His biggest sales job may have been on Palmer himself. In what has become part of Golf Channel legend, Gibbs was in a meeting with Palmer and Palmer’s financial advisers, who had their doubts about the notion of a 24-hour golf channel. Retaining Palmer’s involvement was critical to future success. When it was Palmer turn to speak, he said, “Gentlemen, if I hadn’t tried to hit it through the trees a few times in my life, none of us would be here.”

Brandel Chamblee, who served as lead analyst at Pebble Beach, is best known for his studio work.
Brandel Chamblee is one of Golf Channel’s most-opinionated commentators. (Photo courtesy Golf Channel)

That was the last time Gibbs worried about his co-founder’s participation. “It was almost like we were going to the party; it was just a question of what were we going to wear,” said Alistair Johnston, Palmer’s longtime manager with IMG, in the short film “Day One: The Making of Golf Channel.”

Another key moment that gave the start-up further legitimacy was securing a rights agreement with the PGA Tour. The contract was signed in 1994 during the Masters on the hood of a rental car.

 

Gibbs put together a consortium of six cable companies that together invested $60 million in Golf Channel. In short order, they assembled a state-of-the-art digital facility and hired a rag-tag crew, but they were still flying by the seat of their pants. Two weeks before launch, producer Dave Kamens turned to a colleague and said, “Why don’t we do 12 hours of golf and 12 hours of tennis per day. I mean, 24 hours of golf?”

“I had come from the launch of F/X seven months earlier where we put on eight live shows a day and still ran re-runs of the old Batman series,” he said. “The Golf Channel being ‘born’ as Tiger took hold of the game was mighty fortunate, but the secret sauce was Joe Gibbs’ visionary idea and the eventual viewership that scaled towards Cadillac buyers and Rolex-wearers.”

Producer Jeff Hymes remembers walking down a corridor of the gleaming new studio and Matt Scalici, vice president of network operations, was coming the other direction shortly before the network’s big debut.

“He looked at me and I looked at him and it was dead quiet,” Hymes recounts in “The Making of Golf Channel” podcast. “I said, ‘Matt, stop and listen. It will never be like this again. Starting tomorrow there will never be a dull moment in this building.’ ”

A Golf Channel crew sets up for an early morning live shot at TPC San Antonio. Photo by Erich Schlegel/USA TODAY Sports

Golf Channel has become part of the fabric of the game, with more live tournament coverage than all other U.S. networks combined. Over the past 25 years, it has become the place golf fans turn to watch everything from golf’s major professional circuits to NCAA Men’s and Women’s National Championships, Drive Chip and Putt Championship National Finals, the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, golf’s return to the Olympics, documentaries like Arnie, original programming such as more than 100 episodes of Feherty and more than 300 episodes of School of Golf as part of its news, instruction and entertainment programming dedicated to showcasing the global sport in more than 70 countries and nine languages.

“It’s fun to know that the excitement that night and the hope of a group of people actually turned out to be well-founded,” Van Pelt said.

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