Ep. 19: Does anybody CARE about the VIEWER?!!

In episode 19 of the Shack Show, Geoff Shackelford rants about the limited online only live coverage made available to the viewer during the 2020 Workday Charity Open.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Shack Show is a production of I Heart Radio.
Does anybody care about the viewer today on the Shack Show.
I understand we have many things going on in the
world that are far more grave and problematic than the

(00:25):
streaming golf experience of a viewer. But I have to
get a few things off my chest because we just
had the best PGA Tour event since the return to
golf has been ongoing here in this pandemic world. And
it had to be started early because, of course, the

(00:45):
tourists in Doublin, Ohio, home to rain whenever the PGA
touris in town, and the PGA Tour did a wonderful
job moving up the tea times on Sunday. As I speak,
they are experiencing the rain that was forecast would not
have been playing. So a great job there, fantastic. So
we start the day bright and early with a fantastic

(01:08):
leaderboard young guns. We're trying to get this sport younger.
We want these kids in, so we tease them with
some Golf Channel coverage with wattson Nick Valo on the microphone.
It is a wacky start. Justin Thomas stumbles out of
the gate. Colin Morrikala figures out what was going wrong
On Saturday, he writes his ship, it's gonna be a

(01:31):
wacky final round. Victor Hovelin is right there and through
seven holes, we're done. So go to one of those
places that where they streamed the thing. Okay, so your
options were as a viewer, you could watch on your computer,
you could watch on a device, or you could be

(01:53):
an idiot like me trying to watch on your one
year old television with everything updated. You're smart TV, all
uh web browsers, apps, everything's up to date. I had
not done this before in previous rain delays when I
was sent to the CBS Sports dot com or CBS
Sports app. I watched on a computer and it worked

(02:15):
pretty well. But it is just not a lot of
fun to watch a golf tournament on a computer, especially
when we have high def, we have wonderful sound. CBS
is really doing a great job now. I mean, when
you think about how spread out they are. The commercial
load issues of the first week are gone. The team

(02:35):
is just holding this together beautifully. We've got a drone,
We've got all this beautiful visual stuff that you know,
I want to watch on the thing I paid money
to watch on and I paid too much money each
month in the form of a cable bill to watch
golf onund so Golf Channel is not an option. We
go to streaming. Of course, if you go on Twitter,
you know all this is going on, and people are

(02:57):
immediately getting annoyed by signing off on television and then
sending us to this wilderness of options that do not work.
It's as simple as that they simply do not work.
So here we have golf. It's it's in the spotlight,
it's the sport. It is showing that you know, without fans,
the last nine isn't as fun, you don't have the crowds.
But otherwise it is really showing it can work. Right now,

(03:20):
Other sports have major questions. I don't think they're gonna work.
I think off will continue to work. So here we
have this opportunity. Set aside that we had a pairing
this week, a grouping excuse me, of three players who
are all COVID positive, and we're kind of rewriting the
rules on that front. We'll just ignore that for now.
Let's take the really first world here. So I open

(03:44):
up the browser, like I'm told CBS Sports dot Com
I guess later on as you'll read. If you go
to my Twitter replies, you can see people saying, oh,
you need to go to the Yeah, you need to
have Roku with the CBS Sports app. No, no, no,
go to PJ tour dot com. Don't you Roku. It
was unbelievable trying to get this to work. So I

(04:04):
get it up. It's working the broadcast. After I sit
through the FedEx AD and some other stupid thing that
that it's it's in horrible standard deaf, I get the broadcast.
It goes for about ten twelve minutes. Crashes happens again.
Happened in three times during this, including right before justin
Thomas sank a fifty foot put from the most ridiculous

(04:26):
place on the eighteenth green at Merefield Village to sing
a sinka put from. So I missed that. And as
I'm sitting there watching this, you know, obviously I understand.
We have major corporations here. We have Viacom, which on CBS.
We have Comcast, which owns Golf Channel, and NBC. ESPN

(04:46):
Plus is part of the equation. Now they have PGA
Tour live coverage on the weekends. We have the PGA Tour,
which has its own website and then its relationship with
NBC Sports Gold for PGA Tour Live. I don't even
know if the Amazon Prime option and exists anymore for
PGA Tour Live, and I really don't care. There are
too many options. Does anybody sit there at the executive level,

(05:12):
uh in any of these corporations and attempt to watch
this like the young fans that this group was drawing in,
or do they attempt to watch it as the older
fan who is not adept at using this technology, who
is used to simply turning on their television, entering the

(05:33):
channel seeing the golf, or if it's not, they're turning
into the other channel that they know it's probably moved to.
Does anybody go through the user experience? And I just
don't know how anybody possibly could do that and go
to work tomorrow or go to their zoom meetings. How
are ready do this and say, yeah, yeah, we we've

(05:54):
got this. This is really great for our audience. And
now a word from our sponsors, forget the consumer now,
because we are used to this addity. Here. You have

(06:14):
a company and work day that at the last minute
is putting up probably a total package of at least
ten million dollars six point five I think was the purse.
Big money. They have given the tour another tournament. The
people in Murefield Village gave up their course for another week.
Jack Nicholas signed off on that, even though this week

(06:36):
probably will end up maybe you know, tainting the Memorial
week by basically playing the same tournament twice, and we'll
probably be tired of Murefield Village after two weeks. The
course set up will be slightly different. We'll hear all
about that. Whatever. So you have this company that is
wants to sponsor golf. And as I'm watching this stream,

(06:59):
in between the times it crashed when CBS goes to commercial,
half the time there were no ads. It just simply
sat there with the cover coverage gap graphic. So from
work days perspective, the people who were really passionate really
engaged the ones that they want to reach and tell
their story too. In these brakes either were fumbling with

(07:22):
trying to keep this thing working, or watching on a
small screen, or helping their friends who are having trouble
finding this wanting to see this exciting duel between callen
More Coowa. Justin Thomas and Victor Hovland on one of
the best courses on the PGA Tour. Uh and they
were too busy to notice the message of the sponsor

(07:44):
and to to notice this kind of wonderful thing unfolding
in the world of sports, with this group of talented
players who you really want people to get engaged with
and and build your future around. And we're told, with
all this competition, all these network partners, this is good
for the viewer. This raises the stakes. That's not happening.

(08:06):
Fox did enter golf and they forced people to use
more tracer, they forced people to up their game in
some other areas. UM, that's about it. Otherwise, competition wise,
what I'm seeing is the party is not working together.
And now they have one more year left on the
current contract and then a new contract. I've seen no

(08:26):
sign that the new contract addresses this other than the
production element is handled under one umbrella. But that doesn't
answer the question of streaming and what happens in a
rain delay when there's live golf and everybody knows it
and the PGA Tours tweeting about it, it's on their leaderboard,
and to watch it, you have to go through this

(08:48):
ridiculous experience that in still does not work. Streaming sports
still does not work. So I really don't know where
the leaves us. Because we have another week coming in
Merefield Village. It will rain again, the forecast calls for it,
thunderstorms probably every day. It is just the nature of

(09:12):
the beast. There will there be If Tiger Woods is
in contention in his first week back, and yes, we're
very excited and we'll have some Shack Show content this
week about that. And we're really taking things up a
notch now. We've got bryceon d Shambo coming back after
a week off. He's probably put on another thirty pounds
and Brooks Keptco will be there and maybe he'll get

(09:32):
into the top and the FedEx Cup Points race before
he can start taunting Bryson with more accusations of Royd rage.
And we'll get to back to focusing on the fun stuff.
But will anybody sit there and say, how how are
we going to serve our viewers better when we have
this opportunity in golf right now to show people golf

(09:55):
and show them sports and do it while nobody else
is really doing it other than you have some horse
racing and you have some auto racing, but otherwise not
a whole lot going on here in the next couple
of weeks still, and I just don't know. I'm I'm
at a loss really to understand. If anybody actually thinks
of the viewer. That's the end of my rant. This

(10:17):
is the Shack Show. Like I said, we have Tiger
Woods coming up this week. It's gonna be a lot
of fun. I hope the weather cooperates. I help me
your field village holds up to two weeks of heavy play.
And I thank you, of course for listening to The
Shack Show, which is a production of I Heart Radio.
And for more podcasts from my Heart Radio, please visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you

(10:37):
listen to your favorite shows.