Behind The Numbers: Golf Channel's Most Watched April Yet
/Ed Sherman reports on Golf Channel having its most-watched April ever even with Tiger Woods not playing the Masters. For 24-hour day the channel averaged 130,000 viewers per minute, a 2% year-over-year increase compared to April 2013 according to Nielsen, with 16.9 million unique viewers, whatever that means.
The big jumps came from prime time, Golf Central, Morning Drive and the LPGA Tour.
• Arnie and Big Break Florida drove Monday night’s primetime viewership +29% YOY
• Golf Channel’s news programming is up with Golf Central +20% YOY and Morning Drive +24% YOY
• Golf Channel’s instructional programming is +10% YOY
Golf Channel Tournament Coverage:
• Golf Channel’s weekend lead-in coverage of the PGA TOUR’s RBC Heritage and Zurich Classic of New Orleans all posted most-watched records (RBC Heritage third round: 529,000, +1% YOY; final round: 598,000, +40% YOY; Zurich Classic of New Orleans third round: 462,000, +84% YOY; final round: 615,000, +49% YOY).
• LPGA Tourposted a +38% YOY increase in April with two significant milestones:
◦ LPGA Kraft Nabisco Championship’s weekend coverage posting most-watched records for this major event (484,000, +16% YOY).
◦ LPGA Lotte Championship’s primetime Saturday final round posting the most-watched regular season round (485,000, +108% YOY) since the Mobile Bay LPGA Classic in April 2012 (566,000).
◦ Coming off of his Top-5 finish in the 2014 Masters, Miguel Angel Jimenez made his Champions Tour debut by winning the Greater Gwinnet Championship, which was the most-watched Champions Tour event this season (322,000, +77% YOY).
Maybe in all this grow the game talk we have to consider the role Golf Channel is having in keeping people from playing? Why not, we've blamed just about everything else!
