Sky's US golf: Q&A

Dave Tindall pays a visit to the Sky Sports studios in London to see how their US golf coverage works.

When I posted on Twitter and a couple of golf forums that I was going down to London to see how Sky's US golf coverage worked, I was soon flooded with responses after asking if anyone had any questions they wanted me to put. Several of these were of the "ask them to give me a job" variety; others reflected all golf fan's thirst to see more live coverage. Well, Sky did show 200 live golf events in 2010 - "ask Sky if they have plans to do their own golf channel" said one tweet - but most were referring to individual broadcasts. The short answer as to why we might see less shots than we want to from a typical PGA Tour event lies in the TV deal Sky have with the PGA Tour. The contract is to take their host broadcast - be it from the Golf Channel, CBS or NBC. To put more flesh on the bones and arm viewers with more facts, I put these Twitter/forum questions to Sky Golf's David Randall. First though, I had a quick snoop around the studio itself. As usual with TV, the set is much smaller than you think, making me feel at first as if I was intruding and had walked into someone's living room. But from presenter David Livingstone, to guest experts Denis Pugh and Peter Oosterhuis, to Quentin the floor manager and the two guys working the cameras I found everyone polite, warm and friendly. Three cameras are used (see pictures above) in the studio. The left points at David, the right is fixed on Denis and Peter while a third points directly ahead at footage of scenic shots, sent pre-event by the host broadcaster and woven onto a continuous loop by the Sky team. This locked-in middle camera is the safety net. It provides the go-to shot for unwanted US ad breaks/promos, allows captions to be dropped over it and also eases any odd looking camera movements when the conversation moves between presenters. Just as fun when being on set is picking up on the little moments of trivia. The discussions include fellow presenter Robert Lee's love of Mad Men (now showing on Sky Boardwalk folks!), David's insistence that Rangers and PSV will end in a 0-0 draw (nearly, PSV edged it 1-0) and Denis' love of twitter. The knowledge is impressive too. Denis had been to this week's venue, Innisbrook, on a family holiday in 2004 so knows the course very well while, when the action cuts to former champ John Huston, David has an off-air stab at when he won the Hawaiian Open. "1998?" he asks and Peter's notes proves he's spot on. Over in the technical truck next door it's a busy scene as the director, assistant director, producer, sound supervisor, technical manager et al all work feverishly to adapt the pictures coming in from the US and make sure everything runs smoothly. At one point, Denis spots something in Vijay Singh's swing he wants to analyse on air. He relays a message to the truck next door to get Vijay's swing sequence lined up so I dash over to see them putting it together. It's ready quickly and Denis goes to work on his little Sky pad device, revelling in the Fijian's athleticism and silky swing at age 48. I'm particularly pleased by this as I've had a speculative 150/1 ante-post each-way punt on Vijay for The Masters! It's now two hours into Sky's live coverage and producer David Randall is still busy under his headphones. I'm glad at this point that we agreed to chat a couple of hours before Sky went on air! As you'll see below, David's answers get right to the heart of Sky's deal with the PGA Tour and explain some of the complexities involved. Why can't Sky show more golf shots being hit? And why aren't European players shown more? David Randall: We are beholden to the American host broadcaster for the majority of the events. So their focus is quite often on the major American player and they can overlook some of the Europeans for that reason which is frustrating. In terms of how many shots, once again we're beholden to a host broadcaster and network that has more commercial content than we do. We show every shot we're given, pretty much and we don't miss coverage out to substitute it with studio chat. The studio chat is to replace the big gap in coverage and we feel we can perhaps enhance the broadcast if he have something suitable to say or there is a particular talking point we can go back to and give our opinion on it or have some instructional piece to fill that time or break. But it is a frustration. With certain events we do have a large onsite presence - the upcoming Masters, the Players Championship, the US Open, the USPGA - and this is obviously incredibly expensive. It's just too expensive to do it every week as much as we'd like to. It's an expensive operation without travelling to the States and bringing the pictures in High Definition and so forth. And, of course, the initial rights deal (Sky are into the second year of an eight-year deal) is obviously extremely expensive in itself. What can we expect from Sky's Masters coverage. Will you have own cameras, as you did at Doral recently? And how much coverage will be shown? We will have "our own cameras" (actually CBS cameras which we take feeds from and turn around) so yes, we will show European golfers which CBS don't. We have 1 hour "build ups" each day with Studio presentation from the on site team. After that hour setting up the day we show 4½ hours live play on Thursday and Friday, 3½ hours on Saturday and 5½ hours on Sunday. Is it true that over half the shots shown on TV are recorded? You have to accept that some golf coverage is recorded because there are, in theory, 18 different fields of play - and you can even break those down into tee shots and greens. You can only be live in one place and people do hit golf shots simultaneously so naturally there will be some recorded. Obviously it depends on the host broadcaster how much is off tape. I think when you get a particularly tight leaderboard with 20 guys within a couple of shots, inevitably some of that is going to be recorded. Once Sky receive the feed from the US broadcasters, what additional delay is built in before you send the pictures out to the viewers? We hope none. The intention is none. If we are in a commercial break that is longer than their commercial break or in a studio chat that misses a couple of shots we will then turn those round on a delay so that they get seen. We don't sell them as being live necessarily. But no delay is always the most favourable option. Sky must get frustrated sometimes at the pictures coming in from the States. Have Sky told the host US broadcasters about this frustration and if so what was the response? We make suggestions, constructive criticism of the feed, all the time. We try and suit coverage to our best interests, however the pictures are produced by a host network who are producing those pictures in their best interests. So there will be conflict unfortunately in what we want and what they want. Obviously we want continuous golf but they have a lot of commercial breaks and commercial commitments that we don't have and are lucky not to have. Could we see more instruction please? We try and add a little bit of instruction wherever relevant but we're always trying to maintain some editorial thread keeping along the lines of what you're seeing whether it's a windy golf course or whether it's a particular player that needs analyzing. So we try and let that follow editorially rather than think oh, we've got a break in the coverage, let's roll in a slightly random tip or advice. We always try and tailor it towards the current editorial theme. Does sky plan to have there own golf channel ever?

I don't think so. But we did show 4,400 hours of golf across our channels in 2010 which is pretty phemonenal. What about having a full live leaderboard available by pressing the red button? Once again, it's technically possible but labour intensive and once again it comes down to budget. Is that an appropriate allocation of resources? There have been occasions in weather-hit tournaments in the States when Sky have shown live coverage while friends in America have told me they've had to watch delayed coverage of it two hours later. Is that true? Yes, in the final round of the recent Honda Classic, no other TV station in the world apart from Sky was showing the tournament live. Weather plays a big part in golf and if play is brought forward, we endeavour to get that feed live rather than direct from the host broadcaster on site. So rather than through our usual channel, via PGA Tour productions, we actually get what we call the back haul feed direct from the host broadcaster. It's not a friendly feed for us in that it's full of random commercial breaks, TV promos and this that and the other. It's untidy. PGA Tour productions endeavour to clean up the feed and cover some of the black holes when they've gone to a break but when we're on that back haul it's quite risky. But that's the only way to bring it in live and that's what we try and do. Do you ever think people might prefer live and raw over tailored more often? If you just sat on a host broadcaster's feed and didn't do anything with it, it would be almost unwatchable. It would be full of black holes and unbroadcastable. It's often people betting in-running who are most vocal in their complaints when shots are being shown which aren't live. Do you have any duty to them? Or are they just a sub-set, no less/more important of the viewing public as a whole? Well, we have a duty to subscribers not necessarily to people who are having a bet and we do try and bring live coverage. Now, as we said earlier, golf isn't always live. We are beholden to the host broadaster. If they have chosen to hold up a shot that they originally didn't think was important but then decide it was and it goes in two minutes later when the score has already been updated we have to go with that. Sometimes the host broadcaster might not be aware of a run being made by a particular player until the scores have gone in. They then ask their VT departments if they have those shots and they might get the response back 'oh yes we did get that guy but we didn't think it was important'. It depends on how good their communication is out on the course. If you've got 156 guys, or half that at any one time playing a round of golf on 18 holes, there's an awful lot going on. When things are tight you're up against it to cover everything. And it's impossible to cover it all live. Some shots have to be recorded. Will that upset someone betting on it? Possibly, but there's no other way round it. You can't have all 18 holes interactive because how do you watch that? Split the screen into 18 parts? (Laughs) But what audio do you have? What graphics do you put up? That's carnage. That's not a television programme.