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Channel 27. Channel 49. Channel 218. Channel 405.
It's been at several addresses on my TV sets over the years, but for as long as the game has been on my radar, Golf Channel has been there for me.
I grew up on Golf Channel. As a kid completely obsessed with the game in the 1990s and 2000s, I was the resident golf dork at school. With few exceptions, other kids didn't get it. I felt outcast, part of the wrong generation.
Golf Channel talking heads and their rapport with the greatest players helped reassure me that I was far from alone. They helped me fall deeper in love with the game, completely un-self-consciously.
When I learned in 2017 that the golf media startup I was working for had been acquired by it and the greater NBC Sports empire, I was ecstatic. More than seven years later, I still feel privileged to tell people that I work for a company that sits adjacent to Golf Channel. They even gave me a byline in 2022 when I went to the Cayman Islands to interview Latin American Amateur champion Aaron Jarvis ahead of the Masters.
Golf Channel then, now and tomorrow
"If I hadn’t tried to hit it through the trees a few times in my life, none of us would be here," Arnold Palmer once said about the now 30-year enterprise he co-founded with businessman Joe Gibbs. It went live January 17, 1995 as a linear-TV conduit to live tournament golf, instruction and lifestyle shows: a platform where people could deepen their love of - their obsession over - the game of golf.
Golf was, is and probably always will be a niche kingdom in the sports world. But it's an influential one. Golf Channel pioneered sports-specific TV networks, claiming with conviction that golfers were passionate enough to support a 24/7 schedule.
What seemed like a risk at that time now seems almost obvious in hindsight. Other major sports have followed suit with NBA TV (started in 1999), Tennis Channel (2003), NFL Network (2003), NHL Network (2007), MLB Network (2009) and even Willow (2010), a cricket channel available in the U.S. It is hard to imagine the time before single-sport TV.
The media landscape has changed radically as technology has turned every smartphone into a handheld television and forced the entrenched rights and distribution paradigms to evolve. New-media takes on golf are exciting, but Golf Channel remains a pillar of the game. The coming years will be interesting as digital continues to challenge and replace linear viewership, but what won't change is golfers' burning love of golf. I know Golf Channel has a big role to play in fueling that fire.
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