By TREVOR GRANT
December 8, 2004
http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story ... id=2350801
A POWERFUL television boss has warned that Australian professional golf faces a long-term financial crisis as TV ratings drift to all-time lows.
Ian Johnson, managing director of Channel 7 in Melbourne, said yesterday his network could not guarantee coverage of the tour beyond current contracts if audience figures remained at unsustainable levels.
"I think there is a definite concern that we won't be seeing golf on free-to-air television down the track," Johnson said.
He said professional golf needed to react urgently to the message from the sporting public -- that golf was "boring" and "self-indulgent." The alternative was oblivion in big-time Australian sport.
Johnson's comments were given further currency by Seven corporate affairs spokesman Simon Francis who said: "The ratings are not as strong as we'd like and it's up to Australian golfing authorities to re-establish the pre-eminence of the sport in the Australian calendar."
Ratings over the past two weeks, at Australian golf's two longest-running events, the Australian Open and Australian PGA, have been disastrous for the station, and for the sport.
As Peter Lonard marched to victory at Coolum in the PGA on Sunday, the audience peaked at 142,000 in Melbourne and 123,000 in Sydney. On the previous Sunday, for the Open in Sydney, also won by Lonard, the figures were 158,000 in Melbourne and 143,000 in Sydney.
A comparison with the 1997 Australian Open -- when Englishman Lee Westwood defeated Greg Norman in a play-off -- indicates that hundreds of thousands of loungeroom sports fans have deserted golf.
That year, Channel Seven achieved the Australian tour's highest-ever rating of between 500,000-600,000 in Melbourne.
Overall the Australian Open coverage averaged 195,000 national viewers this year -- compared with 325,000 last year.
The PGA did marginally better with 322,000 national viewers this year compared to 2003's 296,000 -- but the figures were still too low to sustain Seven's commitment.
Johnson said Channel Seven had a contract to cover the Open and Mastercard Masters -- to be played this week at Huntingdale -- until 2008.
However, the station has already been forced to cut costs this year by out-sourcing most of the production of events to TWI, the television arm of International Management Group.
Johnson said these days his network lost money on every tournament it covered.
"We would honour all contracts but going forward if the audience keeps falling there is no way the Seven Network can justify spending big money on golf," he said.
Johnson said golf in Australia needed a major overhaul if it were to survive as a going concern.
However, the Australiasian PGA Tour's chief executive Andrew Georgiou put a much more positive spin on things yesterday.
"The ratings aren't what they used to be in the mid to late 1990s but I don't think they've changed significantly in the last couple of years," he said.
Must say golf is one sport that I just cannot watch on TV. It seems I'm far from alone with the TV ratings for the Australian Open and PGA tour being abysmal this year.
Reminds me of the Adam Sandler movie Happy Gilmore.
