No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 236: TV Producer Jeff Neubarth

Episode Date: August 5, 2019

Jeff Neubarth joins us to talk about producing golf for FOX, some details on the production of "The Match," drones in golf, contracts, and basically everything you need to know about why golf is the way it is on television. Jeff also touches on why things are likely to change in the near future, hints at future iterations of "The Match," and so much more. I learned a lot in this process, and I'm sure you will as well.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. That's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most! Expect anything different! All right guys welcome back to the podcast. We are not going to be debriefing any professional golf on this episode. I am on vacation currently. I think you can look for something potentially on the trap draw feed in the coming days from the guys that are back home.

This episode is going to be my conversation I had out at Callaway with television producer Jeff Newbarth. Jeff works for Callaway, but has worked in golf for a long time producing stuff. He's gonna talk about his background, but most importantly, and most relevant to the conversation in today's game is his work he's done with Fox and as well on the match.

I found this conversation absolutely fascinating for as much as we talk about television coverage. There's a lot of questions that get answered here and a little bit of hope that he gives us that things are things are going to be changing. Now we did record this episode before kind of some news came out about Turner potentially getting involved in golf coverage and being bidding on the rights. So we don't specifically talk about that, but we do talk about contract negotiations that are coming up and how things might potentially change. Great conversation with Jeff.

This is really, really fascinating. At the end, he mentions that he wants people to reach out to him with any questions they may have about television coverage. He's a very helpful guy. Before we get going here, the Epic Forged Irons that I mentioned back on the Jason Bone and Lumpy podcast, they are officially out. Callaway has been the number one irons in golf for over four years now thanks to the Apex, Rogue and Big Birth of Irons. Now they have another set to add to

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Let's get to Jeff Newbarth. All right, we're here in a much fancier studio than we have back home at the Killhouse. I'm here out here at Callaway with Jeff Newbarth. Jeff, first of all, what is your position here at Callaway and what is kind of your background? We're going to talk kind of just television production, golf production. We obviously have a lot of critiques of it, but we need you to punch us back a little bit and kind of set us straight.

You guys critique production? Every now and then, we'll have full time in. I've never heard that from you before. Mostly it's DJ, it's almost entirely DJ. It's always DJ, right? Totally, it wouldn't be you, because that's why DJ didn't come out here to face music. Exactly. No, but I'm currently the executive producer here of Calaway Media Productions at Calaway

Golf. So we kind of have our own media company within the golf brand company, and we're lucky enough to have a great team of people. We can do everything from a commercial to feature videos to we do our own podcasts. We have our own podcast network, which is crazy to think about a brand doing that. I know it helps though with this studio, you know, we gotta use this thing, right? We're trying to do it more and more. We do stuff with Series XM, lots of our partners,

stuff with you guys, add shoots with players. So kind of a great thing is we never know what we're gonna do. Like something literally just came to me, like, hey, we need to do this today. Like, all right, so here we go. We move quick, we pivot quickly, and that's what makes it great to work here. And what's your background kind of, you know, you've worked in a lot of different places, you've we go. We move quick, we pivot quickly, and that's what makes it great to work here. And what's your background kind of,

you know, you've worked in a lot of different places, you've done a lot of television production, kind of gives an idea of what your background is. And that's right. Yeah, I've been super lucky. So I went to Syracuse a billion years ago to study broadcasting. Always knew I wanted to be in broadcasting

and knew very quickly I wanted to be behind the scenes, mostly for aesthetic reasons. But also just, I have this passion of producing and sort of troubleshooting. Like I always love to think of the scenes, mostly for aesthetic reasons. But also, I have this passion of producing and sort of troubleshooting. Like, I always love to think of, okay, if this goes wrong, what I do here, and that's kind of what television production is. So I started at USA Network.

Back then, we had like 30 some odd PGA tour events. So I got to do a little bit of that, but we were basically the two day facility check for the network. So CBS would show up and they would spend two days figuring out if their camera's worked by putting it on the air on USA Network. So that was really fun.

And then from there, did some stuff for Fox South East, locally, a lot of SEC hoops and ACC hoops and then went to ESPN and got lucky enough to do some SEC hoops and then eventually something I baseball, their main NBA show, just tons of events that they had. didn't do a lot of college football, but almost everything else he has PN had and then got to work on the open championship

with Mark Lumis. And then when Mark went to Fox, even though I'm still full time here at Calloway, I do work for Fox doing, at least the men's and women's open some years I'll do the senior open, kind of as a producer sitting right behind Mark working with Joel Clat this year working on sort of the non golf stuff

and then also working with the technology guys which I love doing. It was first year I got to do that this year. So basically all these guys who are coming up with different ways to look at what's happening on the golf course through numbers and stats and technology which I love, getting to help integrate that. So let's start there with Fox.

Take me to like how different the way they do things is versus how you've seen things done in the past. And I think to not to, I want to give them credit for that, but also kind of say like they don't have the blueprint that say CBS or NBC has. They don't have the week to week. I mean, the one thing I will excuse with mostly with CBS is seeing how big these production trucks are, seeing how big this operation is.

Like, there's not time to be like, all right, this week we're doing it different, like this, we're changing everything this week. Yeah, and look, this isn't a knock on Lance Barrow, the long time courting producer at CBS or Tommy Roy at NBC. I can't do what those guys do, respect the hell out of them, but they've been doing it since before I even started. And I'm not young. So we haven't had a lot of change and turnover in golf. And I don't know if that's good or not. You know, you could argue that, you know, Fred Gidelli, you know, who's probably the best live producer I've ever seen, you know, has been doing the NFL show first for NBC or a Monday Night Football and ABC. suddenly football went to NBC for a long time and that show most people consider the best produced show in Sports television, you know Fred and Drew show

But a lot of other places have had changed right so when Tony Romo came in to CBS That wasn't just Tony Romo coming into it. They brought Jim Rick off into produce it. That was a new set of eyes So at Fox the biggest philosophical change and this is all from Mark Lumis, is when, if me and you were going to go play golf, which I don't know why we don't do, but we probably should some time, we're going to play from the tea to the green. Yet for years and years, golf has been broadcast from the green to the tea. Everything has been broadcast in a reverse. So Mark's first sort of message, and when we started back in Chambers Bay, was we are going

to cover golf the way people play golf. So we have more handheld cameras. We have more tracer, especially when we started doing it. Now everyone has tracer, but we literally have tracer with almost every shot. Change the game. But the goal of that was you can't see it from behind you. So that's why, but think about it. Like there's nothing worse to me when you're watching a shot and a guy hits an iron shot

and it cuts to behind the green. It's just in the sky. I hate that. I have no idea where it is. I don't know where it's going. Half the time it's on tape. So the announcer who's down there can't talk, talk. Because you really can't talk when you're on tape unless certain times you can, but you have to listen as an announcer when the ball is hit and you have to be darn sure you know what shot they're showing because sometimes it's one to two shots behind. But that ability to go from T to green was sort of a philosophical shift that golf hadn't seen. And that to me is been marked sort of

biggest accomplishment. And then the hard part is fine tuning the talent, right? I mean, think about it from year one when it was Kurt Manifey and Tom Weisskoff in a studio. Greg Norman up in the booth with Joe who'd never called golf before. You know, some other changes. Now when you add in a polysinger, you add an occuredus strange.

You add in Joe Klat. You have some really top notch people and it just takes time to go off. Joe, it's fired at Shane Bacon there. I love Shane. You know what? Let me say this. Shane is going to, in the next 10 or 15 years, be the voice of golf. I don't doubt that.

There's a whole Shane section we probably should get to because I'm probably going to Shane's biggest cheerleader, as long with you guys. But Shane getting added to that second booth in places of some other folks who we're not going to talk about, changed things. He and Brad are so good together that it really just adds another. You have an a plus announced team No matter where we are because because a couple years ago It was it was kind of you know, I don't read too much of what the critics write

But I have a really thick skin I mean you've talked to me after shows I've done. I don't let it bother me You know, I sort of tell people like hey if you can do it better and want to put my shoes on and sit there and do it In the even the, you have no time to make a decision, but one of the guys from a publication slaughtered Fox and the reason he slaughtered it was for the two and a half hours that it was like Shane O'Donohue,

and I don't even remember who was with him in there, calling golf and it's like, if you're gonna judge, that's like basically criticizing the Patriots right now because they don't have the best third string quarterback for Tom Brady. Like, like, judge it on the 18. On the 18. 14 hours a day. Like, like, at some point, human nature, you know, I guarantee that guy was in sitting in the press room for 14 hours a day. So, you know, stuff like that kind of frustrates me a little bit, but, but all in all, that's sort of been the biggest kind of difference. And, and you're right, they're not doing it week to week. Look, if you watched the juniors this week on FS1,

you're not gonna see that technology the same as you're gonna see to USO, but that's just budgets. And budgets drive everything now and that didn't used to be the case. Not the fluff fox too much on this, but it felt like that first year, I think there was a big inward look and like a lot of things that you guys needed to improve on. And there wasn't any ego that went with it,

I felt like it was like, yeah, like we, that didn't go well as we would like to, but that was and you kind of knew I would imagine that you had to learn that way. There was no there's no training course for what you're about to go. So the first year at Chambers Bay, I didn't work on the main broadcast. I worked on the digital broadcast with Tim Brando and Mark Brooks, which went really well. I thought we went okay. I mean, it was it was the advantage we had is we covered all 18 holes and look, this is where I think it's funny about sports TV Especially when you start getting into the awards season of sports TVs some of the worst shows I've ever done have won Mike Awards and some of the best shows I've ever done people have not liked because the ratings worked out what saved the digital coverage on that first

Year, I don't remember on Sunday. We made a decision to start off and show fill for nine holes So to come on the air when Phil was on 10 instead of doing something that that they had planned, then we picked Rory up for this first hole. Well, Rory goes out, what do you shoot, 64 that day? Something like that. And we had every shot. And then from there, we went to I think the Stettaker group who was like third back. And at that point, it did matter because the big guys were on TV and everything was unfolding

in front of us. But having the decision that we made, and Mark was a big part of the decision, Kevin Landy myself, to go with Phil Rory, as opposed to just kind of coming on two hours later and picking up, whoever made sense just to back time to Snetaker, that changed the featured groupings coverage. And that kind of showed people like, oh, this can pivot, and this can be kind of something that we want to see. And then year two, at Oakmont, Mark moved me into sort of the main unit kind of behind

him. But yeah, there was a lot of self-doubt and self-assessment between, you know, Chambers Bay and Oakmont. Yeah, it felt like there was, all right, we did these five things great, with the technology stuff is totally different. The audio, I think the audio that Fox has always had really takes you much closer to the action. Some people didn't like the mics and the cups and whatnot, but I liked it because you I think the audio that Fox has always had really takes you much closer to the action There's some people didn't like the mics in the cups and whatnot

But I liked it because you hear like you know an exasperated like tiger like Yeah, well did you notice the change this year in the cup mic? You couldn't hear the ball Yeah, so so a conscious change was made to not show the ball rattle However, we left the mic up when the flag stick was left in so you would hear that because we thought that was kind of cool and that was kind of unique and kind of different, but sort of the biggest change in the philosophy this year was doing that. But- Why was that, just people didn't care for it?

I just think we didn't care for it. Ultimately, I think we watched the broadcast back, you know, one of the things we do, and this is the advantage of having one major championship as opposed to these guys who have 30 weeks at golf, is we all sat as a team and watched it as a production team and then mark sat Uh with a group of announcers and watched it and no one talked and they watched and I don't know how often you know how often do you go back and listen to your pods? Decently often I let some time pass and then go back and I do the same thing every pot I do with Calaway

I listen every single one and I always try to wait like two weeks to kind of listen to it But a lot of people don't do that in TV because you're just going show to show to show to show to show You got to watch your stuff and by watching it We're like this is a change and especially with the flag stick and it gave us that opportunity to say well That'll be the time that it makes sense to do it But the best things we've got out of it like there was a DJ moment at Shinnecock A couple that he did not bomb but there were a few good moments where he said things about break and stuff. You would have never heard that

if there wasn't for a mic in the cut. So I think they have value. I think we're tweaking and learning. And that's where I think people almost misunderstood what the purpose of those mics, it wasn't to hear the ball go in the hole. I was like, we need to get the audio closely. I think Fox, throughout its history,

has been a pioneer in audio. Joe Carp who's the lead audio, and this is why I always laugh when people said things like, oh, these guys are on call if I don't do it. You know what, Joe Carp is's the lead audio. And this is why he's laughing. People, you know, said things like, oh, these guys are in qualifying. Don't overdo it. You know, what? Joe Carp is probably one of the top five A1s lead mixers in the world. He does the world series. He does, you know, so many big shows. I can't even name them or we'll run out of time. But like, if that guy knows what he's doing. Yeah. And it's not about that in the camera guys who, you know, year one, everyone's like, oh my god, they had the worst camera. They're the exact same

camera guys that work for NBC. Everyone else, everyone's like, oh my god, they had the worst camera guys. They're the exact same camera guys that work for NBC, CDS. Everyone else, Chambers Bay was just impossible. How's that work? The cameraman are not exclusive to the networks. Is that right? Some cases. Some cases, they are. And they're sort of a good, well good faith community within the golf broadcasters.

Look, you know, I went to, you know, with Ethan and Tyler, we went to Pebble Beach this year. And I was excited to go in and see Lance and Jim Rick off and those guys and say hi and Molly Solomon. We ran into her and we were shooting the Golden Tate piece over at NBC. And we were happy with everybody. And I think most people in sports television get along and look, you know, those camera guys want to work. And if they were told you can only work with one network, there would be enough work for them. So, you know, they are afforded the luxury of working for different places and that makes us all better.

Well you just kind of touched on something there that made me kind of make something I hadn't really thought of when you said lead mixer like for audio. Take us behind the scenes like how to- Oh, goodness. So, the way I picture like all this live stuff and the more and more I uncover it, I don't know what the analogy is but it just seems like there's this train that's on a track and it's going to go no matter what. And trying to incorporate, like, do all these things while you're on that train is so difficult.

I mean, all the things that are flowing at once, like, whether it's the live shot, a replayed shot, the graphics that have to go up onto it, the announcer's got to know what's going on, the on course reporters, and then use that audio that you just mentioned, and really. So the way that I look at it is, it's air traffic control, right? So there's one plane that's gonna land at a time and there's one that's gonna take off seconds later.

That's what's on the screen, that's what you see at home. There's a lot of planes in the air, there's a lot of planes on the ground that are being loaded up, some are being fueled, some are taxing to take off. That's all happening at once. And the producer and the director are the team that are being loaded up, some are being fueled, some are taxing to take off. That's all happening at once. And the producer and the director are the team that makes that all happen. So the most important thing is what's happening on the screen.

But there's so many different things. So there's a big contrast between something like the US Open and something like the match. And I'd love to have you come out at some point to a US Open and literally come early in the week and see the setup and then stay and watch how we go on the air and do it. Because just an audio alone, let's take that, for example. So Joe Carp has a team of multiple mixers. So using full mixers that would normally do an entire basketball game by itself are mixing just effects on holes

because we put out so many different mics. So when we go to say the seventh hole, there's a guy who's responsible for say the odd holes or the first six or the middle six or whatever, that is mixing just the effects on that hole. There's a guy who's responsible for say the odd holes or the first six or the middle six or whatever, that is mixing just the effects on that hole. And then Joe is taking that effects mix, mixing it with the announcers who are talking because remember each announcers have different assignments of different holes that they're doing. So, you know, in our case, Paul and Joe have the evens except for the first hole and then Shane and Brad have the odds and they get the second hole instead of one. You know, so Joe, Carpastino, okay, we're going to tiger on the third hole.

That's this sub mix, which is gonna be mixing the third hole for all the audio. I'm gonna have the announcers of Brad and Joe and then oh by the way, I have a course reporter who's with Tiger. I'm gonna do that and then when we go into the tracer, it all goes to delay. So if you notice when we cut, you're losing frames. So we try to go to a tight shot of him or his hands. You try never to go like why the middle of practice wing or literally you would see time shift. And then when you cut, and the tracer goes up,

when you cut to the ball coming down, you actually regain time so you're going ahead. So that's why we don't use tracer on a shot, say, 120 or shorter because the time of that you lose when you go from the cut of the delay trace to real would be so jarring you wouldn't want to do it. It does seem like when you just pro-tracer on the screen the ball lands quicker on the green because you're picking up time. Yeah, you've lost time then you're picking up time.

I think you mentioned something to me too about trying to get the tracer matched up with the film and the audio. Yeah. Getting the audio in there. So to give you an example of the match, one of the things that makes an event that you have lots of golfers a little bit easier is you have lots of people hitting golf balls. So even at Fox, we don't come on with the first shot of the day. We come on two hours in.

We've been able to test all our tracers and the audio and there's a team of people that literally goes tracer to tracer. Does this work? Is it in sync? Is it in time before they sign off the week and use it? Because we can always go to the same camera clean. And that's what happens when it is less than 120 yards. So the camera would be X and then we have Kleed X.

And for like two years I thought Steve Bim just our director wanted like a tissue. But apparently there's Kleed X and then when he said Kleen Y I'm like, oh that's what that means. But for the match, we didn't have that ability said, clean why I'm like, oh, that's what that means. But for the match, we didn't have that ability. We didn't have anyone else out there before Phil and Tiger. So we took one of these system pros at Shadow Creek and literally made him go with a mat around the entire golf course and hit balls for the first six holes

because we had six tracers for that, set up to make sure that they all worked. How do the tracers work that aren't like the ones that are stationary on T-boxes? I can picture working pretty well But I mean is it just a camera that you take out there and it picks up the golf ball. Yeah, it's it's the wall So it's a whole camera system. Yeah, that's on the lens of the camera that picks it up and basically Uses the properties of what the ball is doing and follows it mathematically

It's phenomenal. I remember that first time I saw that when Ricky was in the fescue at I remember that first time I saw that when Ricky was in the FESCU at Aaron Hills, the pro-chaser came out, I was like, wait a second here, that is take it to the next level. Yeah, it's amazing what these guys can do. And I don't like watching golf without it. Yeah, it's really hard to watch. The only one I'll give a pass to is Augusta, but even Augusta, we're starting to get a little like,

to me, the 15 T shot at Augusta is my most frustrating one because they always have that, there's no room to put a tower behind 15, so they have that handheld that's about the height that I am right now really low, and it just hits up, especially in the day, it just hits up into a sky. And with all those trees down there, you have no idea where that ball's going. The one thing I think that maybe the next step in the pro tracer is, Foxx was again the leader in this, is pointing out where the target is. And I think there's still something there about like fairway with, like when the guy hits a shot,

you can maybe see the fairway where it is, but like if there's some kind of shaded area of like, here's where this is gonna be a good shot, and here's where it's not. That I think adds something to it, but that's. And the other thing that makes us a challenge to get a US Open is, remember, they're changing the setup each day.

We don't get that ahead of time. So literally as, well now it's John Bodenhammer and the team that's doing the setup, as they do it, they radio in to the USGA and they send it to us. Like, whole one is going to play 400, 6 yards. The whole location's here and this. So, like, we're literally building on the fly. Because sometimes they're setting up

the last few holes, 16, 17, 18, 7, 8, 9, while we're on the air with the first holes. So it's just real challenging. One thing that, again, the benefit of only doing so many events a year versus the week to week stuff, but one thing I talked to somebody at Country Club at Charleston right after the US Women's Open, and he was just so excited

about the week and how it went. And he said, I couldn't believe it, but Brad Faxon got ahold of me and sat with me and met with me for hours to learn the history of this golf course. Yep. And the point was kind of like, there's no point in going to this golf course.

If you're not going to tell the history, you're not going to tell the reason like why this is a Seth Reiner golf course and why this shot matters and what the strategy is of it. And he was just so impressed that Brad like went to that level to do that. Well, I'll tell you this about Brad. Brad would do that if he had 35 weeks of year of golf.

Brad is a savant in the sense of, and I don't know who else, and I'm not trying to knock anybody else, but who else has the ability to talk about the pressure of playing in major championship golf because he did that. The coaching ability, especially in short games, because he currently does that and has this passion for architecture. He and Gil Hans just have these conversations for hours. That's why we put Gil with Brad and Shane, because it turns into two architectural geeks

and Shane certainly is super knowledgeable about the history of the game and architecture as well. But Brad is just so passionate about all that stuff. Each guy like Zinger is super into the mental game of golf. You always hear him talk about, it's not about the swing, it's about what's between the years. And that's where you're gonna hear from Paul, a Port Rush and any other tournament that he it. It's not about the swing. It's about what's between the years. And that's where you're going to hear from Paul, this, you know, a Port Rush and any other

tournament that he does. That zinger sort of lane. Brad is really into the history and the architecture, and that's why they work so well together. Yeah. I think Brad is, I think he's one he's improved tremendously, and I think he's got a future as one of the Hall of Fame announcers, just based on, like, I'm hanging on every word he's saying on the broadcast, and it's, I hope he kind of bridges the gap, and I think he does between the casual fan and the broadcast and it's I hope he kind of bridges the gap And I think he does between the casual fan and the really advanced fan I think as well and that's where him and Shane Works so well together. Yeah because they you could tell that this is how they talk all day off the air They play a lot of golf together and are talking that way on the golf course, you know

We do the I'm gonna say this word very slowly sectional qualifying show together with Brad and Shane and we do the USDA Year in review with them. And they're just friends and there's something about chemistry. You know, to me, I always tell people the most important thing in television with your announcers is the chemistry. So certain shows have done certain, you know, programs have worked on. The chemistry is not there and you can't fake that, right? But when you have great chemistry and it's readily apparent, I mean, Joe and Paula really

close, you can tell that. But, you know, Joe and Troy, when they do and Joe and John Smolts, but chemistry is beyond important. And if you don't have that, you can't fake it. And that's something Brad and Shane have. Well, we, we, uh, I got a chance to go in the, uh, Randy and I went to the NBC truck production truck at the KPMG Women's PGA. By the time this episode comes out, I will imagine that we've posted that video. But I was just amazed at, well, I mean, one, I knew this existed, but the level of infrastructure that goes into a live event, you can't even picture it. I tried to capture it on video and you just can't even understand how many, I must have seen 10,000 buttons

and I couldn't tell you how many cords. And like, does that, how does that compare to any other sports you've done? Oh, I mean, it's, it's by far the most infrastructure. Think about this, and I'm trying to find a picture right now to kind of illustrate it. You know, if you think about the infrastructure of the football game, right, you could have, I mean, well, let me go back to NBA, so when I did the NBA finals,

we would have 45, 46, 47 cameras. There's only one ball. So really, the only job is just to keep the ball in frame, and everyone will be okay, everything will be okay. But if you think about it this way, that if you look at, and I'm showing you an overhead view from a drone of the US Open Compound, and I'll make sure you have that picture so you can share that with people who were talking about it. But I mean, there's probably 55 or 60 trucks in this complex.

Each of them 53-foot mobile unit, which is the largest you're allowed to travel with on the road. You know, what's crazy about it to me is that if you look at NBA, you know, you'll have really one game truck, you'll have a support or truck or two for really whether it's graphics and replays, you could sort of outsource those guys a little bit. And then you have another one for like sports center, you know, the jump and all the other shows that they're going to do. And even of those 45 cameras though,

half of them are like we have a camera in each locker room. Well, that's only used pre-game, half time in post-game. You have the walk shots. So like one of the shots our director Jimmy Moore loved was when, especially when we were doing the Lakers with Kobe Staples, this is beautiful walk back to the locker room with all this kind of historical stuff.

Well, we would have to put three or four robotic cameras up just to cover it in case we couldn't get a guy through because sometimes it's just a lot going on. In golf you have 18 holes, you have you know up to 30 something balls in the air at one time you got to be covering them all at once. So that just leads to this infrastructure and then when you again like when you start adding delay into it when you start adding high complex graphics into it there's just so much that comes in and then RF is the big sort of hero this whole thing when you were in that compound those

giant towers that go 30, 40, 50 feet up in the air, well think about communication. Each group has a spotter with them for spotting and scoring. Well that's on RF communication. You have your course walkers. You're going to have 3, 4, 5, 6 of those. You have different entities covering it. So you're going to have sky out there sometimes.

You're going to have Japan out there. You're going to have other PGA tour live out there. Every bit of that's running off of RF and they all have to be coordinated in these frequencies, all have to be dialed. And so the technicians of golf crews are the heroes. And they're the underappreciated heroes, quite honestly, who really make this whole thing happen. What is something and we might have touched on eight things already, but something that myself and any viewers at home probably don't understand about

a live golf production. How quickly we forget the mistakes that we make. I think that in the live environment, you beat yourself up over and over when you watch something like weeks after you do them, sure, like after you do a podcast, you watch, oh my god, why did I ask that question? How did I do it this way? In the live moment, you're gone. So you may get a reaction like when a bad graphic comes in, you're probably going to hear the producer like, come on guys, we can't do that. That's gone. It's over. And that's the stuff that I think is pretty forgivable.

I don't think you get it. I don't think people beat people. No, no. Well, we beat ourselves up because we want everything to be perfect. But even the decision, you know, to go to a feature at a time and you miss something, you know, one of the one of my favorite moments in TV was back in 2000 at Sydney at the Olympics. I was the tape producer for NBC's Women's Soccer Coverage. We did a whole bunch of different shows, but we were doing Women's Soccer in Mollie Solomon and the executive producer of the golf channel was working the show at the time. We went to a commercial during the Women's Soccer, it was either this quarter final or

semi final, because that's what you did back then. You went to commercials during soccer, you waited for the ball to be in a dead end throwing. So as we're in commercial, it was like throwing, fowty steel, kick it to me, kick it up to stay and they scored. So now we come back and we have to replay a goal that you missed. And as we replay the goal that we missed, we almost missed another one. So Dick Embers saw the long time chairman of MBC Sports walked in the control room,

and when he walked in, it was a very much a command presence. And he was like, how many more commercials do we have left in the soccer game? And the associate director is like, we have two. He goes, no, we don't, we have zero. We will not be taking them anymore in soccer. And that's it. We never took another commercial in soccer.

And so we loaded up half time. That's where they started doing the sponsored segments and stuff like that. So I think just the amount of people that work on these things, you probably, I mean, there's probably over 500 people working on the US Open for Fox. I mean, for the match, we had well over 100 people. And that's just two guys hitting golf balls. It just takes that many people to kind of do it and do it, right? And the support staff that goes into it.

Well, I want to talk to them about the match, too, but I also kind of want to talk about more of the week to week in the NBC and CBS stuff, which I know. You're not a part of those teams that I want to talk some about the match too, but I also kind of want to talk about more of the week to week in the NBC and CBS stuff, which I know you're not a part of those teams and I don't want to get one of them. I would have been a part of them though, because you had the USA Network early around golf I was there for a lot of the time. So kind of specific to that, I kind of want to, I'm having a big issue watching golf on weekends and it's not. Me too.

I don't think it's the fault of CBS and I know we're really hard on them, but like, I don't think it's their fault that they have to run so many commercials I think they've paid so much damn money for the rights. Well, it's not the it's the contract the contract stipulates because think about it It's not just commercials. It's promotional so so each amount of broadcast will get X amount of commercials And if the tour is going to sell a title sponsorship package to 3M 3M gets a certain amount of spots in the broadcast. The local broadcasters get a couple minutes at the top and bottom of each hour to do their local,

you know, that's why when they always say, we back with this with the word from your local CBS stations. That's the local break that we'll sell. So if you're on direct TV, you're gonna get a different commercial than if you're watching in Jacksonville, and me watching in San Diego. VED, you have promotional announcements for the tour,

the live under par spots, you have promotions for coming up late night on Colbert, like it just adds up. So ultimately, what we've done is we've shown on digital fronts that we can do golf commercial free and it's way better that way. At the US Open, we severely limit our commercials once we hit 15, we're not even allowed to take anymore. But this year, we got a little behind

and we had to do a little bit more. But it's really hard, because when you come on the air at 10 o'clock in the morning, if someone's tuning in at that point, you want to show them golf. But you also want to get your commercials out of the way before the leaders tee off. But the commercials are probably more valuable when the leaders are out. Exactly. So you've just run into the conundrum. So I think what needs to happen is all these contracts and they're in the middle of negotiating right now for 2021. I would expect by expect by the end of the year we're going to know a lot more than we know now but I think that's going to be a big change in it. It's how can we make it profitable for the

broadcaster and for the entity selling the rights of the tour while making it better for the fan because these are old contracts. That's what no one gets. So these contracts are so old. I mean I was still I think at USA Network when this contract started. And I've been there in like 10 years. So it's, it's, or maybe it was a DSPM, but it's one of these things where we're, we're, you know, everyone wants these long term things. And I always make fun of that the next, you know,

we're going to award the 20, 75 US Open pretty soon because they're just going so far ahead for reasons I don't understand. But they did the same thing with the TV contracts. And the fact that these went through 2021 and they were negotiated what in 2011, that's a long time. And a lot has changed in that. A lot has changed. I wonder if that's going to change like for those that don't know, we can't

go out to a tour of it and film basically any nor can we account. It's just so and that's kind of part of this TV contract. And they've basically sold the the rights inside the ropes to all the networks. And even if it's something that's not gonna show up, clearly not gonna show up on a broadcast, you can't even touch it, like not even close. And that, I think severely limits golf. In general, I'm just watching some of the majors pop up

the things that people are allowed to do on site that we would love to be able to do. And look, you're not trying to steal from the network broadcaster. To me, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and we've said this to the door, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday should be fair game for any. You should want all of us doing it. Like, like think about, think about at an MBA finals game, you know, the amount of media that is there doing stuff on the floor or around

the arena just before tip, and they all go dark at tip, all we would do you guys, any content creator, would just build interest for the events. And it would actually help the sponsor. It's free for them. They don't have to pay us to do it. But that's the old thinking that still exists. That's in contracts.

And what I truly don't understand, and I'm sure it's just the money of it, and these are such big deals, because I mean, think about it. What if the golf channel lost a ton of early round golf? What if they lost a ton of the PGA tour? What if they lost all the PGA tour? That could happen?

Then they're not the golf channel anymore. So they're going to protect those rights with everything they have. You saw CBS, Sean McMannis say, a couple in an investor call that he will do whatever it takes to get the NFL on CBS. He doesn't want it going to zone or Netflix or any of these other things. These are important to those guys. And these are where livelihoods and checks are kind of made. So I think it's one of those things where it's so old that it would be smart if they all

get in a room and said, let's figure this out. Hey, can we take two and a half minutes out of commercials? And the NFL did it last year. They took time out of commercials where they would not allow a broadcaster to go, they called double up. Where you have the touchdown extra point commercial. Yeah, come back kickoff commercial. They they took that away and they add a little time to halftime.

Well golf has no halftime. Yeah. What are you gonna do? That's what I was gonna ask is what is the solution? Like do you see one? And because like I said, like I can't I can't do I think it's like 18 30 seconds spots per hour or so much. Too much that.

It feels like more than that because I would imagine because of all the sponsored stuff that's within the actual broadcast. And then I just want to believe that there's another option out there. I'm not smart enough. To me, it's got to get to the point where you almost have kind of what you have in the Augusta Media Center, which I've never been in since they've done this, but just every group is available and you're paying money to CBS and you can watch a show if you want or you can just create your own

adventure and you can go in and look and choose and do whatever you want. I think that's the only way really to do it and then the other way to do it is just to limit those commercial hours and go with the bottle of the next 22 minutes of the 3M invitational is presented by 3M. I just leave their logo up on the screen the whole time. And that's where they end up. That doesn't bother me much, but again to 3M is that really working for them?

You know, does Callaway benefit? Because we're not gonna sponsor, you know, we're gonna sponsor 20 minutes of coverage and none of our guys are showing in that 20 minutes or are we gonna try to force them to show our guys? It's a really tough thing, but limiting the commercial hours and working with the network, you know what might mean?

The tour taking less money, I mean not that they would ever do this, but if they took less money, there would be less reason to sell commercials. That, and it's also, there's gotta be a diminishing returns at some point where like if you and I are gonna sit here, it's two of the biggest golf fans, like we're in the probably 1% of golf fans in the world.

We're definitely are. Like if we have trouble watching the product, like who's gonna sit there and watch it? At some point, there has to be a trade-off with like what more eyeballs on it, making it more interesting is going to make this the same model that we have for our podcasts. Like with you guys, we don't, you know, part of, we don't have 80 sponsors on the podcast. And that's part of like what the value is for you guys with it. And there's a trade-off there. And I think they've they've teetered waste way too far on the other end. And it just has me so nervous for the future of well, well, to give you some encouraging news,

you know, Jay Monahan's never done a TV contract. So this is we're still we're still living in in the Tim Finch Amar. So this is his opportunity to put his stamp on on on the future of the game. And look, you know, I'm tired of grow the game initiatives because everybody has one. Here is an actual initiative that could really impact'm tired of growing the game initiatives because everybody has one. Here is an actual initiative that could really impact people's enjoyment of the game. Because my son, I have a 13 year old son, he will never watch golf because he does not have the attention span for all the interruptions.

It's not just commercials. It's going to a blimp shot and doing a billboard. It's everything that stops me from seeing golf action. Whereas if you watch these digital feeds, and that's why it was so unique for me doing that featured group the many years ago, and that's a lot of the stuff that we could do at the match, I could show you every shot in a place.

And you may just have 20 places, and it may be up to you to figure out which place you wanna be. Yeah. And that's two things on that. One, Jay Monahan, when he's on the podcast in the fall of 2017, we actually got to do it in Korea. And like, what's, what's we turn the mics off?

He gave me, like, he was kind of familiar with some of the criticisms I had with CBS one. He gave me like 10, 15 minutes, like, all right, what's your beef? What's the situation here? And like, listen to me. And I have no, I cannot imagine that that's gonna actually have a tangible impact,

but he at least wanted to understand where the hardcore fan is coming from. And my bad is you're not the only person you talk to. It's so. Anyone I've talked to on the tour has, you know, kind of, they give you a little like, yeah, you guys are pretty hard on us for all this, but like, yeah, we kind of privately think the same things. Well, but I also think that they're inherently jealous that, you know, you guys came up

with the name of what their whole marketing campaign should be. So I think you have to deal with that a little bit and take it with a grain of salt. Moving on, I want to talk some about the match because I think the reason why we were so interested in it is I thought there was a great opportunity to kind of do have and invoke some of the changes that we had talked about. First of all, I kind of want to your reaction, you were involved from the beginning to end in this whole project. What worked for you guys? What didn't work and what can we expect in the future? Yeah, I mean, what didn't work was only having one feed, and you'll see this is a theme in my thinking of how television is.

So I'm going to say when it happens again, I'm not going to use the word if, and maybe later than you think, because timing's still being worked out on what kind of the act to is going to be. I think we'll have multiple feeds, and I think that would have solved everybody's issue, because I think you want one feed that would have an answer is talking. I think you want one feed that will have zero an answer, and it's just mics. And you're going to get some really awkward silence, and you're going to get some mixes where like a guy's talking, and it takes the guy's second to realize who's talking, because

there's so many mics out there. And then I think I need a Charles Barkley only feed. I need a feed, I need to call it Charles in charge. He could have his friends, because I got to hear Charles and a pre here, my entire match until 16, when he's like, all right, I'm out. But man, it was the most entertaining thing you could hear.

But I don't think everyone wants to hear that all the time. So I think that that's the key. The beauty of this, this company, this Warner Media Company that does this is they have all these assets, they have BRLIVE, they have TNT, they have HBO, they have all this media now, I think we can come up with a strategy to give you guys different feeds. I think that didn't work.

I think we tried to do everything and it was just hard because remember after the first T-Shots, I remember saying to the guys, okay guys, nobody talk after the first T-Shot. And they didn't. And we heard Phil and Tiger walk up and start 18 holes of awkward conversation. I think part of it is we need to have more than two players. That's the format and the format. Well, I mean, the format would have set it up.

It would have been Leetra Bino and his prime and somebody who can match him. But, you know, Phil is amazing. Phil could talk about everything to anybody and look, Tiger's an introvert. Well, you can't really push Tiger around, you know, and he kind of needs to be the dad and the group and, you know what I mean, like, and kind of needle people. And he just can't needle them because he's got the trump card. Yeah, he's that. And I think quite frankly,

the other thing that got really kind of off-culture was nobody understood the gambling that was allowed. And even in the morning meeting where we had the kind of like a final rules meeting with the players, you know, The players were confused. Well, hold on if I bet a hundred thousand dollars in a challenge and he doesn't win the challenge Just that count towards the amount were allowed to do because I don't think it's a secret The tour didn't want the amount of money to overshadow what FedEx pays for the FedEx cup and to me that's that's the Asa and I'm thinking that we're dealing with engulf that has to change. And it is going to change. But like, these guys had some challenges where they didn't win. And I think they both thought, all right, well, I already spent 200, well, no, you didn't.

You wait, like, so everyone's like, well, why didn't they challenge after 13? And I asked the guys after, like, when we thought we were done. So that needs to be fixed. And I think that will inherently be fixed. I also think there just needs to be a little more of an entertainment aspect to it. Yes. It is an entertainment product through it. And yeah, and like Sam Jackson was awesome. Like I'll tell you the coolest thing of the

whole week for me was we made a decision about a week before that he would do the first T-intros. So Mike Mant who was my boss according to his name, we wrote something up and we walked in to meet him in the morning and it's like, wow, the Sam Jackson. So you go up to him like, hey, how you doing? Jeff I'm producing today.. This guy's mad, he's gonna be pointing at you. At one point, when the first teen, you're gonna read the centrel. So I said, here's some suggested copy, but do what you want, man, I'm not gonna try to write for you.

He's like, I got it all good. And he goes up there, and literally we pointed to him, and he read word for word what we wrote. And that was like a pretty kind of energizing feeling. Yeah. But the other thing I thought that was success was that by not having those commercials and by just showing all the golf

that I don't think we cheated people. I don't think the golf was very well played. I think the greens were not in the condition they needed to be in in order to allow for made putts. They just had so many little subtleties and slopes and quite frankly, they were coming off their receding and they do it differently. They do it like a gust of they completely get rid

of the grass and redo it. So they looked great in terms of like aesthetically, but man, they didn't roll, they were little bobbles and stuff. And then it got dark. And that was interesting. I think like, and feel free to run with the suggestion if you like, I think there's something to, you know, I think you and I talked about it too,

the two booths, it was a lot. Like it was just a lot of talking. And an option would be no booth. Which is like Shane is just an MC. You still have an announcer out there, but I don't need to know, oh, this is gonna break left to right. This is different.

We're doing something different here. Just the kind of needle, and having Sam Jackson or Charles Barkley out on the course, out there to heck, miked up, but if he wants to heckle the guys a little bit, kind of get that banter going more. So I mean, some of the best, the best comparables I had was like looking at old skins, games clips,

when like Fred Funk, when on a casserole and stand out drove Fred Funk and he had to wear a skirt, which you know, got people a little upset. But that kind of banter. But the difference is you had four guys. Yes. And I think, you know, at the end of the day, Tiger really wanted to beat Phil. And I can tell you, because Phil was out there all week.

Phil wanted to crush Tiger. Yeah. And they got into it, you know, the comp that Mike Mant used was this is going to be like an 80s NBA All-Star game. So remember the 80s NBA All-Star game, you have Isaiah, Mahorn, you have Jordan, you have Magik, you have Bird, you have Mikail, all these Hall of Famers, Dominique.

The first half, there's a lot of grab ass going on. They would yuck, they would joke, they would call 101. When it got down to four minutes left in that game, it was, I'm going to beat you. And if I have to, you know, close line you, Bill Mbier, to get that rebound, cream, I'm going to do it. And that's sort of where these guys, when they got to about 12 or 13, they got such into game mode that they weren't talking. They weren't betting, they wanted to beat each other because, you know, 9 million isn't chump change, even for them. But more than that, they wanted the pride.

And they wanted to win so bad that that kind of, they stopped entertaining. And I think that if we had four people out there, I think you would have greater opportunity for entertainment, particularly if the right four guys are picked. Guys or gals are picked. I think we could have greater opportunity for entertainment, particularly if the right four guys are picked, guys are gals are picked. I think we could do something pretty many. Yeah, I feel like there's something that needs to be more translatable to fans and honestly, while I'm watching it, I didn't care who won.

Yeah, and that's an issue, I think, because I don't care who wins the money there. And I don't know if it's a money thing. I think if it was their own money, you'd care. I think I would more, but I can't imagine that's easy to do. I got from one, getting them to sign up for that, two, you could fake it kind of, but I don't think you can get away with that. Well, no, you get caught.

I think the other thing that was successful was the gambling part of it. And I think that that needed to be almost, one point, going to have that as its own feed, where we basically have, whether it's a Todd Ferman, a cousin, Sal, guys who are gambling experts on a set. And that'd be a different channel, again, different feeds because that's the beauty of this BR world. You can have six different feeds done and cost a dime. You'd be able to really go in depth on the gambling because I think when you play golf,

part of the thing that's attractive is the gamble. And to be able to have them play complex things, and the guys at the MGM, we were putting up the end of each hole with the money was bet on them each hole, what the results were, whatever. But we really couldn't prognosticate about the next hole, and I think that's what's missing. I think if I can get to the second hole and before they tee off, say, hey, Phil's three to one according to the books to win this hole because this hole favors a cut. And Phil's going to have to have, as a lefty, he's going to have a much easier shot than Tiger's going to have doing this.

And also, the proximity to the hole on 150 yard shots, Phil is 10% better, and that's what this hole is going gonna lead to ultimately. Yeah. What a, I know you gotta wrap here shortly, but I was kinda hesitant in kind of seeing how it was used at the match, I think it's very difficult. You explained some of that to me, just with the crowds and how hard it is to use drones to cover golf.

Yeah. I thought what they did, Fox this year, that Pebble was incredible. So basically I was hesitant to see how it could work, and now I saw a model. What do you see the surgery of? So let's talk about that. And I don't care for my next thing

because I'm really passionate about this. So Steve Baim and Louis Estis and the guys who put the drone together at Pebble were here. So what happened was we originally had a powered tether drone that was going to be out there on a boat, like on a cord. Yeah, tethered. So that allows you be out there on a boat, like on a cord. Yeah, yeah, tethered. So that allows you to do things rule wise, regulation wise that you wouldn't be able to do. Now, the advantage of pebble versus very other, and we had a drone at Chambers Bay.

I don't know if you remember, it was out over the sound of a Puget Sound there. But having it over the body of water and being able to not interfere and then the fact that a blimp was up in the air overhead to mask the noise, that was key. We never got that close to the players. The match we got right on top of the guys. And there was no one else out there. The issues are liability. You can't really fly it over people, so that's going to be the problem.

And then the transmission signals are getting better and better. The drone that we flew is an Inspire 2, which is DGI drone. That's not like a million- dollar drone that you can't buy Yeah, we're about 10,000 with all the lens and attachments on it plus the RF gear Which is what costs a lot to do it so the tether drone just wasn't working Uh, I don't know whether it was power win wait what it just wasn't working so we got permission everyone worked together And we got a tape immersion to fly it on tether and we think we had a four or five of them So one would go up go the 20 minutes because that's the other limiting factor. The only about 20 minutes of battery,

literally it would come down. They would hand the pilot the next one, and be up in the air and we keep going. That's awesome. So swap in the signal. So that was pretty amazing, but. Was that on a boat? Yeah, yeah, so there was a little boat.

You could sort of see it in a couple shots. That was, look like a regular old fishing boat, probably a 30 foot fishing boat. And instead of casting lines, they were cast in visuals. But I think drones are the key. The question is how do you do drones where you are covering a group where you don't have it over another group? That's what's going to be so challenging.

That's a work with the coast there, Pebble. Yeah, coast is going to work, but like if you're doing a landlock course, like even like, let's say TPC sawgrass, which I know most of our listeners are going to be very familiar with, where are you going to put it? Because if you're flying it on 17, you're interfering with 16 and 18 and 9. So it just makes it super, super difficult. You could do it on your perimeter holes. Like you probably could do it on 8 there, but who really wants it on 8.

So you got to sort of figure this out of how we can figure this to be safer than the camera quality is getting better and better. So as we get into 8K and 16K, those little sensors will get better to wear, because the other thing is you want it to match with your other cameras. You don't want it to look like a poor lens, like an iPhone 2 taking a picture against a giant Sony 7. Yeah, honestly, I've been there,

but I didn't remember how far downhill the 7th hole is. Well, that's the first thing. Well, here's the thing, and CBS won't mind me saying this, I don't think, I don't really care. But they're always off the air when we're on those holes. So no one ever sees the greatest holes on the planet, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. So the fact that we were not off the air, we already won.

Yeah. So that was the difference. That's what made it one, but then the fact that Steve and Mark and the whole technical team put the time and effort into this drone, and was funny as one of the cooler shots was Phil hitting a t-shirt. I can't remember what hole it was on. It may have been on eight.

It was on 11. Yeah, it was on 11 and we just did it from the drone. Yes. Truth that wasn't supposed to happen. We didn't want to be on the drone but we were. We're like, screw it, let's do it. And the drone didn't have the right audio because of the delay because we went to tracer with drone, which we didn't even know we could do, but we just kind of did anyway.

And if you heard a couple milliseconds of audio off, we apologize. That's a forgivable stuff. It was a cool different shot. Last thing, we've talked about a lot on here, the coverage gap. Help me understand that, is there any future in that ever going away?

In the next contract, if it doesn't go away, I'll be shocked. I mean, it just has to go away. And look, there's nothing wrong with, we flip from FS1 to Fox. We take a three and a half minute commercial break to do it. And so what we need to do is our graphics change in that.

It's just, well, I mean, we changed from FS1 graphics to Fox graphics, but I'm telling you, in 2019 and 2020, there's a way. Well, the part that made me upset, and they have shortened it, I think, on Sundays from 30 minutes to 15 minutes. That almost made it it worse to me because it was just because everyone's complaining and they've had This capability the whole time while they're kicking their feet up and yeah, and why don't you do it on Saturdays for 15 minutes if you can do it in 15 minutes exactly minutes

You know, but here's the thing like I would have no problem if That what they did is they for the last six or seven minutes of that broadcast, if that's what it takes, that they go back to an Orlando studio or a CBS New York studio and give me some highlight, because nothing of consequence is truly happening at that point, and if it is, you can replay, but you can't replay a half hour. But you could go away and I don't care, give me a couple baseball scores and show me,

I mean, God, some of the moments we've had in baseball the last couple of weeks have been pretty amazing. Do that, and then by the time you've done that, toss it back and we should be good to go. And I don't need these elaborate opens. You know, these elaborate opens that are off the top of the show are really just for us in the truck. If we had to dumb it down to give the graphics folks, and if we showed three minutes of shots and said,

hey, we're gonna tell you who this is until our graphics machines come up, you'd be happier. But get an extra graphic machine and just have it sitting there. It's just money. Yeah, it's all money. And it's really easy on this side of the desk. It is.

To say that, but I do want to invite you out to figure out one of the Fox events, maybe Wingfoot next year. I think you'd really be interested in seeing, especially like how Tuesday turns into Wednesday, turns into Thursday, because this is the last thing I'll leave you with. The most important day when you're getting ready

for one of these big championships to me is Tuesday afternoon, because if you don't identify what doesn't work on Tuesday afternoon, you can't get it fixed on Wednesday. And if it doesn't work on Wednesday, it ain't work on the whole week. And that's always been the biggest thing is that we put a lot of time and effort into the Tuesday afternoon facilities check rehearsal, technical rehearsal where we literally look at every hole, every mic, every channel of replay, every camera, and dial it in. Because if it's not done then, it isn't going to work. It's a lot of, a lot, a lot goes into it. We just scratched the surface here.

Yeah, and if people have any questions, would we be happy to, you know, have them reach out to you and then I can answer them, you know, either online and post somewhere or whatever we can do this again. Appreciate it. Thanks, Jeff. No problem. Be the right club. Be the right club today. Yes! That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most!

Expect anything different.