Golf Channel: Moving away from Orlando is the end of a great era

Golf Channel moving its home from Orlando, Florida to Stamford, Connecticut may be a smart business move, but it loses much of what made it a favorite for golf fans.

Golf Channel celebrated its 25th anniversary earlier this year. The all golf, all the time cable network launched in January of 1995 as the brainchild of media entrepreneur Joe Gibbs (no relation to the Hall of Fame NFL coach/racing mogul) and the King himself, Mr. Arnold Palmer, the network has grown arguably beyond even their own wildest dreams.

However, the love of fans and players alike is no match for the modern media landscape, as NBC Universal is in the process of moving Golf Channel from its longtime Orlando, Florida headquarters up to Stamford, Connecticut.

So long, Studio AP.

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As first tweeted on Friday by No Laying Up, and subsequently confirmed (to varying degrees) by The Big Lead as well as NBC Sports themselves, this move is meant for “geographic consolidation”. The simplest explanation of that is that Comcast, NBC’s parent organization, simply doesn’t see a need to operate an Orlando branch when they’ve got the majority of their operation based in a town so close to New York City.

This move will certainly make dollars, but that doesn’t mean it makes much sense.

From a business perspective, I imagine the folks at NBC know what they’re doing when it comes to making the books look good. The resources of the television giant are certainly at the top of the food chain, and when you’ve got the best production resources available to you with NYC just a hop, skip and jump away, well, there’s nothing wrong with that.

But when you sanitize everything down to the New York model, you can’t help but lose some of the character that made Golf Channel what it has become over the last quarter-century. A mere 15-minute drive from Bay Hill – Arnold Palmer’s adopted Florida home – the network has been home to some of television’s great golf broadcasters over the years. And that connection to the King also didn’t hurt when it came to getting some great instructors and players to come by, either.

If Golf Channel began as a labor of love for the game, it never lost that feeling even as it grew with the boom in golf’s popularity in the Tiger era. This move hopefully won’t hurt the network’s people too much; other than a move from sunny, no-income-tax Florida to cold, high-tax Connecticut, that is.

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Perhaps this move will allow Golf Channel to do what they do best, with more resources. But if it loses that personality, it runs the risk of becoming just another wing of the NBC monolith. And that’s certainly not something that Mr. Palmer – or those of us who have grown along with the network – would want.

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