Mastersbation!

This is Masters weekend, when a historic golf tournament is played in Georgia, drawing the best golfers from around the world and a huge viewing audience. One of the reasons the broadcast is so popular is that for golfers it marks the start of spring, with the event being played on a spectacularly beautiful piece of land....which really could be better used for something like housing the homeless, but I won't let my own political views get too involved in my web log here.

It is also the time of year when CBS gladly and vigorously rubs itself raw from what I call Mastersbation. See, CBS has had the rights to this thing for over 50 years and has been the tournament's bitch for most of that time. (The club has very specific and sometimes restrictive guidelines for the broadcast of the tournament, which CBS bends over and squealingly agrees to.) And every year CBS unfailingly feeds us a bunch of soft-focused, sepia-toned sentimental baloney, behind soft piano plinks, over which it gasps and squeezes and clenches in a building of ecstasy before spraying its golf ejaculate everywhere, dribbling down your screen like a Tiger Woods chip shot sliding down the green.

Honest to goodness this is what an announcer said at one point on Sunday: “It’s springtime…the season of renewal. Mother Nature’s annual gift of life.” WTF? This is golf. Again, this is all with the soft piano and images of flowers…my wife said “It sounds like a meditation DVD.”

Here are your drinking game words, should you be
watching on Sunday:
Hallowed
Spring
Magnolias
Nostalgia
Palmer
Legend/s/ary
Monumental
Historic
Memories/Remember
“Amen Corner”
Nicklaus

The broadcast itself is sappy enough, but where they really get you is in the pre-broadcast specials and coming in and out of commercials. See, baby boomers are getting old and soon will be dying. This cohort, which has forced its way through our society, bulging and pushing at the seams with all the elegance of a small pig that's been swallowed by a snake, is getting wistful as it faces its own mortality and just absolutely adores the even older guys from their youth who are credited with putting golf on the map, primarily Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, who are still there in the periphery. So, as they've always done, the networks play to the boomers...and it just so happens that Palmer and Nicklaus made their legends at the Masters, giving CBS a lot of footage and a lot of “memories” to bandy about. The network exploits these guys so much; here is the type of thing you’re likely to see, which they did a few years ago: They sit Palmer in a room and show him highlights from his victories (and force him to reflect on days of being young and virile)…clip after clip after clip….more and more and more and...finally……YES! – Palmer starts to cry and CBS shudders and convulses. They hope it was it good for you because it sure was for them!

This year they got lucky. Seve Ballesteros, a Masters winner who is a second-tier "legend," was recently diagnosed with brain cancer, giving CBS a chance to devote nearly a full hour to him on Sunday, in a program called "Jim Nantz Remembers Augusta." (Drink!)

Interesting programming observation - on Sunday the Masters lead-in on CBS was a Monster Trucks event. Hmmm. What percentage of that audience do you suppose didn't change the channel when the Masters programming started? Is there a big crossover group here?