Brandel Chamblee will deal with lead analyst duties for NBC’s protection of the U.S. Open.
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PINEHURST, N.C. — Sam Flood would quite not be a part of this story.
Over the years, Flood’s employer, NBC, has taken a cautious strategy to creating its high executives obtainable for interviews. Call ’em quaint, however the Peacock would favor that its stars of the present be … the celebrities of the present. When it involves the decision-makers chargeable for hiring, firing, strategizing, budgeting and managing these stars? Well, their actions ought to communicate louder than their phrases.
So when NBC supplied up the top of its golf protection at a U.S. Open preview day on Monday morning — the identical day the community introduced its official protection plans for subsequent month’s U.S. Open — Flood’s availability was noteworthy in itself. For the primary time since assuming management of Golf Channel’s day-to-day operations final August and shifting into the de facto steward of NBC’s golf protection, Flood, whose formal title is government producer and president of manufacturing, was prepared to talk on a number of thorny matters swirling round NBC Golf. And, for roughly half-hour with lead occasion producer Tommy Roy by his facet, that’s what Flood did.
At the middle of the dialog had been accusations leveled in an explosive Golf Digest story that pinned NBC administration, and Flood extra particularly, for kneecapping the community’s golf protection financially, strategically and editorially during the last couple of years. The story, by Dave Shedloski, quotes NBC Golf sources bemoaning the community’s lack of path, funding and enthusiasm below Flood, whose almost four-decade tenure with NBC has seen him rise from the underside of the community meals chain to change into solely the seventh government producer in NBC Sports historical past.
NBC refused a number of interview requests for the story, which might have allowed Flood to defend his overarching strategy for the community’s golf telecasts and refute factors within the reporting that each he and Roy now say are unfaithful. Like, for instance, the cost that Flood doesn’t care about golf as a sport. (“I’m a golfaholic,” he stated. “I belong to two great clubs, I love to play and I grind like maniac.”) But on Monday, Flood wished to speak.
Flood, unsurprisingly, stated he disagrees with the characterization of NBC Golf as a decaying, “penny-pinching” entity. From a restaurant desk by the 18th gap at Pinehurst No. 2, he spoke about his in-motion plans to innovate golf tv — and pointed to a glimmering new U.S. Open broadcast strategy as proof that cash is the least of NBC’s issues.
“It’s a completely false narrative,” he stated when requested concerning the allegation that NBC has been cheapening its golf product. “We are investing and looking at opportunities to grow the game and make the audience bigger. Tommy has had more assets and more resources than he’s had in the last few years.”
Added Roy: “This narrative was accurate for several years about stuff being taken out of the broadcast. Sam has switched that around. We’re getting the toys back.”
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Without poring over the steadiness sheets, it’s laborious to say definitively how NBC’s funding in 2024 compares to its funding in, say, 2014, but it surely’s simpler to grasp just a few of the the explanation why Flood thinks NBC’s spending habits are actually below a microscope.
One clarification is the community’s week-to-week golf protection. Some of these occasions have had much less tech in ’24, together with fewer cameras and shot tracers, Flood stated, pointing to a acutely aware editorial resolution to put a larger emphasis on the most important occasions. You may need seen that NBC’s protection from this yr’s Players Championship, which acquired constructive opinions, had extra add-ons than some other Tour occasion this season. That was no accident. The U.S. and British Opens, which NBC additionally broadcasts, could have the same big-time really feel.
“We looked at the entire portfolio, and we decided to lean in where the audience is going to be bigger,” Flood stated. “We use our resources smartly at the other events. You have to look at things through the lens that NBC tournament golf, Golf Channel tournament golf and the Golf Channel studios are one big bucket. You look at the whole bucket and you take advantage of the moment you can grow the game, engage the audience and give the biggest audience the best possible experience.”
But it additionally issues who’s behind the mic partaking these audiences, and NBC has been struggling to crack that piece of the published puzzle. The community’s on-air squad has contracted below Flood in the previous few years, with the departures of lead analyst Paul Azinger and longtime course reporters Gary Koch and Roger Maltbie. While CBS rapidly stuffed openings for its personal lately departed voices, together with Nick Faldo and Gary McCord, NBC management has taken a extra piecemeal strategy to backfilling its vacancies.
Take the opening left by Azinger — arguably one of many 4 largest jobs in golf tv — which NBC has stuffed this season with a revolving door of visitor analysts. As a part of Monday’s U.S. Open protection announcement, NBC stated two extra lead analyst hopefuls (and NBC analysts presently below contract), Brandel Chamblee and Brad Faxon, would deal with lead analyst duties on the U.S. Open, whereas Koch and Maltbie might be invited again for all 4 days at Pinehurst of their earlier roles. (Flood, together with a number of NBC workers, insisted that the USGA has identified concerning the resolution to have Faxon and Chamblee function analysts for “weeks, if not months.”) Luke Donald, one other tryout candidate, will function the community’s high analyst on the Open Championship in July. No full-time hirings are imminent.
“I think if we find the right person [we’ll hire someone full-time],” Flood stated. “But right now, we think for the audience, they’re benefiting by hearing all this different perspective. And it’s kind of fun every week to figure out who’s going to be on and how it all meshes together. For the rest of this year, we’ve got this going on — but who knows what’s going to happen next year?”
Flood stated these choices aren’t being motivated by a community ethos towards cost-cutting, even when in an earnings name in late 2022, Comcast chief government Brian Roberts outlined a plan to chop some $1 billion from NBCUniversal within the coming years — a division of the corporate that features NBC Golf. It does appear unlikely that NBC would dial again on spending on on-air expertise at a time when sports activities networks, NBC included, are falling over themselves to signal broadcasters to big-money offers, figuring out that high quality on-air expertise can masks different community flaws. (NBC pays host Mike Tirico, who recurrently contributes to the community’s golf protection, a reported $10.5 million yearly.)
It additionally appears unlikely that NBC would withdraw from televising skilled golf now, solely midway by way of a decade-long, multi-billion-dollar settlement with the PGA Tour and at a time when sports activities TV rights offers are largely considered the single-most useful asset in leisure. The U.S. Open deal might be renegotiated at yr’s finish, however that gained’t do something to have an effect on the community’s long-term offers with the PGA Tour, the Open Championship and the Ryder Cup.
Rather, on the eve of NBC’s largest golf telecast of the yr, Flood is asking golf followers to consider a unique narrative, one which has him on a campaign to innovate NBC’s golf protection — and prepared to soak up flack and dangerous optics to get it proper.
At NBC, Flood has a status as a trailblazer, credited for creating the “Inside the Glass” analyst place that’s S.O.P. on hockey broadcasts. At Pinehurst subsequent month, NBC will strive Flood’s new “odd-even” strategy through which play-by-play broadcasters and analysts are paired based mostly on odd- and even-numbered holes. The methodology has made NBC’s telecasts extra full of life, as has the addition of Smylie Kaufman’s weekly Happy Hour segments (which Flood additionally launched). Are they groundbreaking? It’s too early to say, notably with none sense of week-to-week continuity.
Big image, these are difficult occasions for golf tv — with sagging scores and negotiations between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund stretching into their twelfth month. The sport’s few TV broadcast companions, notably NBC, have acquired biting criticism from followers over what’s seen by many as a very commercialized product. And smaller audiences and a chronic battle between the PGA Tour and LIV may ship the business load even larger. In some methods, that is probably the most damning piece of proof towards NBC in 2024: Why would it not need to spend money on golf proper now? Why would any broadcaster?
When I posed that query to Flood, he grinned.
“I’m a Boston boy — Brady and Belichick, when they won their six Super Bowls, what did they say? Do your job,” he stated. “We’ve gotta give Bill the weapons. We’ll give him Brady, we’ll give him Welker, we’ll give him Gronk. We’ve got to do our job.”
It’s laborious to say who Flood is on this analogy, and possibly that’s the purpose.
He’d want we discuss another person.
You can attain me at james.colgan@golf.com. Sign up for the Hot Mic Newsletter to obtain my insights direct to your inbox every week.
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