You’ve probably read about the recent flurry of sports-related signings by the two big satellite radio networks. XM has Major League Baseball, but is going to lose NASCAR to its rival Sirius, which already has the NFL and NBA. How has XM hit back? By adding golf to its menu. So when you’re done getting crunked up with Lil Jon, you can get your groove on with PGA Tour-sanctioned radio, 24-7 style.
XM has announced that it has become the official celestial (I feel like an astronaut) radio partner of the PGA Tour. The multiyear deal will be the backbone of a new XM station that will be all golf, all the time. This has interesting implications for XM subscribers and PGA Tour event attendees.
If you enjoy your celestial radio on the XM tip, you’ll soon have a brand new channel. Can there really be enough golf to fill a full day of talking? XM has partnered with a company called PureGolf to create a 24-hour daily dose of “content aimed at the enthusiast.” Now I’ll admit that I was one of those people that didn’t think The Golf Channel could eke out round-the-clock programming when it launched back in 1995. Thanks to endless infomercials, TGC fills the schedule just fine. Can XM do the same?
I think there’s plenty of room for compelling golf radio shows. They’ll probably go with a format similar to most sports-talk stations: A few recognizable names hosting shows, a few shows dedicated to tour-event previews and wrap-ups. There will be golf news updates and, probably, some golf version of the “morning zoo” drive-time format that makes me think of Elvis Costello’s wonderful lyric from the song “Radio Silence”: A “sad waste of this wonderful invention.”
Other than the possibility of inane morning DJs, the idea of checking in on some golf talk during my commute sounds pretty cool. The only thing I wouldn’t want to listen to on XM radio is probably its biggest draw: Tournament coverage. As the old joke says, what’s the only thing more boring than golf on TV? Golf on the radio. The pace is just too snoozy. It makes baseball seem fast-paced (especially if the featured Sunday pairing is Bernard Langer and Padraig Harrington), plus the sport is very visual. Even a gifted announcer can’t convey in a few hushed words the majesty of a Tiger Woods drive or the delicate creativity of a Phil Mickelson chip. Hearing someone say that Tiger just ripped his drive 330 yards is one thing. Seeing it carry past his playing partner’s ball is another.
But… there is a place for listening to golf tournaments on the radio. And that place is? At a golf tournament. For the past few years the PGA Tour has had Tour Radio. For about $10, the Tour sold little AM radios with earbuds at its events, then broadcast the event over a low-power radio tower from on-site. Anyone who’s ever been to a tour event knows you can’t possibly see everything that’s going on, and those on-course scoreboards are only marginally helpful. But having a radio broadcast of what’s going on around the course makes the experience much more enjoyable. I listened to coverage of the Ryder Cup Matches when I was at Oakland Hills last fall, and it made the “sit-and-wait-for-the-next-group” tedium much more tolerable.
Better yet, XM is going to sell and rent its XM2go portable radio units at PGA Tour events. These are snazzy little iPod-sized gadgets. Presumably the sound will be much better than the craptacular low-power AM signal of the Tour Radio. And if the tournament gets boring, you can always switch over to another station and catch some tunes or a different sport.
Golf on the radio. Doesn’t sound nearly as boring as it once did.
I am kinda pissed off about this.
Not for the fact that PGA TOUR is now going on the Sat. Radio, but because I own stock in Sirius and I wished THEY had the PGA TOUR 🙂
call me selfish hehe.
I don’t even own a Sirius radio, but I eventually will. I hopped on the bandwagon when the stock was in the $1.3 an .65 cent range. Figured it was bound to go up 🙂
Thats the one thing I wished I had was radio of golf tournaments when I am on the road. Listening to Lil Jon is cool and all, but I would rather hear about how Tiger and Phil are coming down the final stretch neck and neck 🙂
Hi Donald,
Great job! Keep up the good work. http://www.puttingathome.com
Barry
Good job, Donald.
much of the golf radio market is yet unscathed.The complexion of Golf is chaning rapidly…golf radio is not.Golfers are colorful, exciting, young and old. the market is expanding and golf radio is,basically, static.The golf audience is comprised of many bacgrounds, ethnic, cultural and social. Golf radio is not. Yes, there are tremendous opportunities for the imaginative – take The Golf Channel for example. It has successfully navigated this market with seeming ease.
You guys are the 31457 best, thanks so much for the help.
xm’s coverage of the WGC match-play in Tuscon-2/07–it’s awful!! The announcers are great..but the producers or whoever is responsible for the programming needs not to be working at the job. Every ten minutes they do a “leaderboard” which is a recording, by the third day, of the results of every match from the first day..that is every ten minutes, and then followed by commercials..and then a little bit of golf . Yesterday [friday] they could have been covering all the other matches [as well as tigers] with more detail, but instead you had to hear the 450th repeat of the results of the first day, followed by commercials. At the 18th hole yesterday at the Match between Tiger and O’hearn, they covered Tigers drive, but then broke away for their leaderboard, so you didnt get to hear O’hearns drive covered live, with the match all square. It is awful and a scam. This station has no talent except for the announcers
the main reason I subscribed to xm was for the golf channel. They are thinking of a merger with Serius..this is a good way to lose the subscribers they do have. They need someone with 1/2 a brain and a little bit of talent to figure how how to program and fill the time with more narration