Media Notes

NBC yesterday earned a 1.4 overnight Nielsen rating for the final round of the Tour Championship, which saw Bill Haas defeat Hunter Mahan in a playoff to simultaneously claim the tournament and FedExCup titles. That rating is up slightly from a 1.3 overnight for the final round last year, when Jim Furyk took home both titles. This year's overnight, however, is down 58% from a 3.3 overnight in '09, when Phil Mickelson held off Tiger Woods for the tournament victory, with Woods still winning the FedExCup. NBC also earned a 1.1 overnight for its third round coverage on Saturday, down from a 1.2 last year (Austin Karp, THE DAILY). In St. Petersburg, Tom Jones writes most people in the area were probably “paying attention to the Rays and the NFL," and that is "too bad because you would have missed the best sports broadcast of the weekend -- NBC’s coverage of the PGA Tour’s Tour Championship." The last hour or so “might have been the best golf coverage of the year” (ST PETERSBURG TIMES, 9/26)

TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP FINAL ROUND OVERNIGHT RATINGS ON NBC
YEAR	TOURNAMENT WINNER	FEDEXCUP WINNER	RAT.
'11*	Bill Haas	Bill Haas	1.4
'10*	Jim Furyk	Jim Furyk	1.3
'09	Phil Mickelson	Tiger Woods	3.3
'08*	Camilo Villegas	Vijay Singh	1.8
'07	Tiger Woods	Tiger Woods	3.3

CHART NOTE: * = Tiger Woods did not play in Tour Championship.

PRESIDENTIAL PARDON: The synergy between NBC and its sister network, Golf Channel, will be on display during coverage of the Presidents Cup in November. Golf Channel will carry 27 hours of all four rounds of the international competition live Nov. 16-20, marking the first time all four rounds of a Presidents Cup played outside of North America is presented live. NBC will show 14 hours of taped coverage over the weekend, and Golf Channel will add 9 more hours of taped coverage. Melbourne has a 16-hour time difference (John Ourand, THE DAILY).

BIG FISTS, BIG NUMBERS: MULTICHANNEL NEWS’ Thomas Umstead cited industry sources as estimating that the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Victor Ortiz fight “has generated at least 1 million PPV buys, making it the second boxing event in 2011 to hit the category’s gold performance standard: Showtime’s May 7 Manny Pacaquiao-Shane Mosley fight drew approximately 1.2 million buys.” If the estimation holds, “it will be Mayweather’s third straight 1 million PPV buy event” (MULTICHANNEL.com, 9/24). Meanwhile, in N.Y., Bob Raissman wrote when HBO boxing analyst Larry Merchant “lost control” and fired back at Mayweather during a post-fight interview, he made himself “nothing more than an older version of the trash-talking Mayweather.” Raissman: “Worse still, Merchant made himself a huge part of the story, something that should be avoided at all costs. … Merchant came off as another snarky hairdo starved for some attention” (N.Y. DAILY NEWS, 9/25).