USGA CEO Mike Whan discussed Wednesday, at the U.S. Open, how his organization has worked with NBC in order to reduce the amount of advertisements that will be shown during this year's coverage. Plans are to reduce commercial breaks by 30% this week.
How is it going halfway through the Open Round?
Los Angeles Country Club coverage began on Peacock Thursday, and then switched over to USA Network – owned by NBCUniversal Television and Streaming – for the majority of the afternoon. From the home office it was obvious that there were many commercials. The stopwatch was then brought out.
USA Network aired 15 commercials in the first 12 and 45 second of coverage, starting at 2 pm. ET, USA Network showed 15 commercials. This was compared with just 11 golf shots. Whan was featured in a 1-minute USGA promotion that was shown during the broadcast. All told, there were six minutes of full-screen commercials and split-screens with the "play-through" feature. There was also one minute of promotional material and five minutes and forty-five seconds of full-screen coverage.
To make sure it wasn't an aberration, the same process was repeated at 3 p.m. with a longer window. Twenty commercials were shown in both split-screen and full-screen format during the first 24 minute coverage, starting at 3 pm. There were also 23 full-screen shots of golf. This equates to 9 minutes in either format of advertising and 15 minutes full coverage of golf.
Advertisements from golf equipment manufacturers to MTV were all over the place.
When you combine the opening coverage windows of 2 pm and 3 pm, it meant that there were 35 commercials against 34 golf shots.
The longest uninterrupted continuous window (starting at about 3:13 p.m.) showed 15 shots consecutively. These 15 shots were flanked by 13 ads, in either format, on either side of full-screen coverage.
Five uninterrupted shots of golf were the shortest full screen golf window, beginning at 2:03 pm. Seven ads preceded those five shots and were then followed by a 1-minute USGA promotional video. Six more full-screen shots followed by eight more advertisements.
By: Jason Lusk
Title: 2023 U.S. Open: Ads outnumber golf shots shown on large swaths of USA Network Round 1 coverage from Los Angeles Country Club
Sourced From: golfweek.usatoday.com/2023/06/15/2023-us-open-first-round-more-commercials-than-golf-shots-usa-network/
Published Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2023 20:13:13 +0000
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