Your Game 16. A s a stream of callers phoned in to The Golf Channel last weekend to decry the lack of live coverage of The Presidents Cup from Melbourne, Australia, Joseph E. Gibbs, TGC's co-founder and CEO, could only look on with amusement. His cable channel has broadcast hundreds of tournaments live from all corners of the world, much more in step with the modern information age than network television, whose practice of tape delay coverage appears antiquated. We'd be proud to air the President Cup live. The arguments against it are slowly trickling away when you look at things like total prime-time programming, where cable now has a greater viewership than the networks.
Cable provides some flexibility.
ESPN aired over two days live coverage of the first three sessions of this year's Presidents Cup from Melbourne, which is 16 hours ahead of the U.S. Eastern Time zone. When you're on the other side of the world, there is no right answer. You make a decision that is best for making the greatest number of people happy. Overnight ratings for the Presidents Cup were not adversely affected by the time difference. The two-day average of 3.1 in selected markets was up 11 percent from a 2.7 in 1996 and Sunday's singles matches scored a 3.8, a 32 percent increase over the '96 matches.