Rating Woods' absence

TV braces for life without Tiger

Television network executives and sponsors were not visibly panicking that Tiger Woods would be gone from golf for the rest of the year as he recovered from reconstructive knee surgery. But their disappointment was palpable.

They know that ratings and attendance fade without his otherworldly success.

They are aware that last Sunday, when Woods tied Rocco Mediate to force a playoff at the U.S. Open, NBC had the highest final-round rating in six years, and that when he won on Monday in sudden death, he fueled the highest golf rating on that day in 30 years.

"It's a real loss," said Ken Schanzer, the president of NBC Universal Sports. "You hope as we go forward that new stories emerge. We have two other majors to be played, and it could be that someone becomes hot and important stories happen through them."

Schanzer said he witnessed Woods' appeal on a flight during the playoff.

"I stood up," he said, "and the whole JetBlue plane was watching Tiger Woods; young and old, men and women, black and white, applauding on the plane. When you see greatness, you're drawn to it, and in his case, you're drawn in multiples."

The Tiger Effect on television is reminiscent of Michael Jordan's impact on NBA regular-season and playoff viewership. In 88 tournaments over the last five years, Woods finished in the top five 54 times, pushing final-round ratings to a 4.4 average.

The 34 other events averaged a 3.4 -- a 29 percent difference.

And in 2007, weekend ratings were 58 percent higher in tournaments in which he played.

"The overall general excitement in the marketplace is helped by his presence," said Sean McManus, the president of CBS News and Sports. "There's obviously increased interest when he does well."

McManus said Woods' absence would not cause CBS's golf advertising sales to dry up; CBS is largely sold out through the third quarter. The risk is that the events CBS anticipated he would play -- the Buick Open, the AT&T National and the PGA Championship -- will perform below ratings estimates and the network will have to give advertisers make-goods, or free ads, in other broadcasts.

John Bogusz, CBS's executive vice president for sports sales, said the network did not expect that even a healthy Woods would play in the Barclays from Aug. 21 to 24, the first of four tournaments in the FedEx Cup playoff. Woods skipped it last year and still clinched the Cup title with wins at the BMW and Tour Championships.

Without Woods, the Barclays had the fewest viewers in the FedEx Cup playoff. The final-round average of 2.8 million viewers who witnessed Steve Stricker's victory was significantly below that of the Deutsche Bank Championship's 4.9 million (on Labor Day), the BMW's 4.35 million and the Tour Championship's 4.2 million.

The third and fourth rounds of the Deutsche Bank, BMW and Tour events are on NBC, as is the Ryder Cup.

Seth Waugh, the chief executive of Deutsche Bank Americas, said that the company's tournament, from Aug. 28 to Sept. 1 at the TPC Boston course in Norton, Mass., would survive.

While CBS, NBC, ABC and TNT must endure without Woods, the network that may miss him the most is the Golf Channel, with its raft of early-round coverage. The network's tournament ratings fall between 18 and 33 percent when Woods does not play, which is reasonably often, because he never plays a full PGA Tour schedule.

"Tiger is all about the upside of golf," said Page Thompson, the president of the Golf Channel. "What he does transcends his sport and brings in casual viewers; when he's absent, it's much harder to get those casual viewers in."