Golf Channel head: NBC spinoff will create ‘minimal disruption’

As Comcast prepares to spinoff most of its legacy cable assets out from under the NBC umbrella, many golf fans have been left wondering how coverage of the sport will look once Golf Channel leaves the mothership.

NBC Sports EVP of Golf Tom Knapp wants fans to know that their viewing experience won’t change much, at least initially.

In talking with Front Office Sports’ David Rumsey at the PGA Show in Orlando this week, Knapp explained, “Early stage, fans will feel exactly the same. And the goal is in the early stages of this is minimal disruption. Our production will be what you’re used to. The goal is, though, to innovate and perhaps be a little bit more nimble than we’ve been in the past.”

The sentiment echos what NBC Sports President Rick Cordella said late last year after “SpinCo” was announced. “From a sports perspective, the partners that we have on cable assets like Golf Channel and USA, we’re going to fulfill every obligation, every promise we made to them across NBC,” Cordella said at the time.

And while Knapp suggests that Golf Channel will still be intimately partnered with NBC, the goal is to evolve.

“We are still going to be partnered with NBC in a lot of different ways. But I think the goal there is to be more flexible relative to evolving what we do,” Knapp told FOS. “We know as a golf business that our viewer tends to be on the older side, which is very good because that also means they have disposable income. But, we also have to appeal to tomorrow’s golf generation which right now is consuming most of their content on YouTube… You’re going to see us over the next few years doing more and more content with content creators and integrating them into our programming in many many different ways.”

Those initiatives will likely include more content like Golf Channel’s upcoming Good Good GolfNow Desert Knockout which features content creators from the popular Good Good YouTube channel competing in primetime on the network.

For now, however, the focus for Golf Channel seems to be continuing to do what it does best: producing live events and associated shoulder programming. After all, that’s what most people are tuning in for — and that won’t change whether it’s inside NBC or not.