The countdown is on for Back9Network, which bows on a national TV stage on Sept. 29 via its new deal with DIRECTV channel 262. The golf-lifestyle channel hits the airwaves with nearly 1,100 hours of original programming in its first year, including ten original primetime series, live morning, midday, and evening shows, and a slate of golf lifestyle programming covering travel, real estate, food, fashion, courses and equipment. The launch comes after the brand established a successful digital presence that offers a taste of the network’s flavor.
Cynopsis Sports spoke with Carlos Silva, President and COO of Back9Network, about the launch, the challenges of creating a network and filling voids in the marketplace.
Silva on the state of the channel: As you know, it’s not easy to launch a TV network but we’ve had a pretty good digital presence and we’ve continue to grow the audience. The center of the wheel of course has been the network and we’ve been hard at work behind the scenes. Launching on DIRECTV has always been part of the dream and they are a terrific partner, giving us a national footprint so we’ll be in 20 million homes. Over the last couple of months, we’ve been building out our studios and bringing on some more talent.
On taking the job: For me, it was about the marketplace. With so many golfers out there and us feeling like there’s a lot of them who are not consuming television, we just think there is a great mass market that hasn’t been addressed. The great golfers and their birdies and bogies have been covered, but the whole lifestyle, travel, vacations, equipment and the clubhouse mentality hasn’t been addressed.
If we went and played golf, we’d probably talk about Rory or Bubba and those guys for a hole or two. But for the other 16 holes, we’d talk about cars, food, travel and fun. That’s a big part of what everybody thinks about all week long, waiting for a Saturday to go hang out with their friends. The other piece of this is bringing everybody into the fun of golf. We think the game needs it and we want to invite everybody in and enjoy the game whether they play three times a year or 50 times a year.
On building networks: You’ve got to be there every day and get a little lucky. I’m a big believer that building digital presence while you’re working is vital. I think the distributors like to see that audience, even more so now than 5 years ago. It’s fine to have a good story and a good pitch, but if you can say you’ve got 2 or 5 million uniques coming every month, they raise an eyebrow and know that audiences like your message. You’ve also got to have a marketplace, and you’ve got have a lot of advertisers who support you. We’ve gotten a lot of confirmation on that front. Golf is a healthy marketplace and that helps us as well.
On programming: We have really taken a strong stance around the primetime shows we’ve got that are very character driven. In the case of some of the other popular shows, such as Duck Dynasty, you don’t have to be into fishing or hunting to enjoy the show. There’s a lot of that with the shows here. For example, we’ve got a show called Ball Hogs, which is about a guy who dives into the lake to reclaim the balls. That’s very much a similar type of show because he has such a strong personality. Ahmad Rashad is also part of the network and he will be bringing his friends as guests for his show where they’ll play golf and he will offer his own style of interviews for the series with guys like Michael Jordan and Bill Murray.
