Golf Channel On Pace for Best Year Ever

Golf Channel is on pace for its best year ever in 2012

Through the third quarter, Golf Channel had recorded four consecutive quarters of record audience delivery, and continued to be the fastest-growing network on U.S. television among networks serving 80 million or more homes. Nine of the past 11 months have hit monthly all-time most-watched milestones, and all of this success has been built upon what was then a record-breaking year in 2011.

"These business milestones are the product of fantastic golf that resulted in some of the most intense drama the game has ever seen," said Mike McCarley, President, Golf Channel. "Years of planning and hard work by the Golf Channel and NBC Sports’ team went into capturing this drama in more compelling ways than ever before, including live golf coverage, news, specials, original programming and documentaries."

The year has seen many highlights for Golf Channel, starting with the network notching its highest-rated and most-watched PGA TOUR Opening Day ever in January. It also registered its most-watched PGA TOUR round ever with the final round of this year’s AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Original programs also scored for Golf Channel, including Feherty, The Haney Project and Big Break, all of which drove Monday primetime ratings to a 41% gain versus 2011 through October. Additionally, cornerstones of the network like Golf Central and Morning Drive were up 28% and 27%, respectively, through October when compared to 2011. Golf Channel’s success translated to digital as well, as every PGA TOUR event grew year-over-year in 2012 and the Golf Channel App delivered 40% of the network’s record digital traffic.