Martha Burk's impact on the Masters golf tournament will be felt once again.
No commercials.
Woo hoo.
While Burk's ill-fated protest over Augusta's all-male membership continues to fade away, her legacy remains. She probably takes little solace that viewers are the ultimate winners in her crusade, which Hootie Johnson effectively defanged by going with commercial-free Masters coverage to circumvent protests of the tournament sponsors.
Saturday and Sunday's coverage on CBS might as well be on TiVO, which records shows sans commercials. For viewers, the lack of advertising interruption is significant.
For the CBS crew, it's no big deal. Commercial break or no commercial break, the show goes on just like always.
Jim Nantz, in his 19th year of Masters coverage, said the commercial-free zone doesn't make his job any tougher, even though he's asked about it all the time.
"Fans ... have it in their heads that when we go to a commercial, we must take the headsets off and run a few laps around the course and hit the concession stand," Nantz said. "In reality, it's not a sport like basketball where, during a commercial, everything stops. It's covered out of the truck as if it's still on the air. There's no difference."
In fact, commercial breaks make CBS's work more difficult. In the span of one commercial, a half-dozen or more shots will be struck on the course, leaving those in the production truck scrambling to tape them and prepare them to be squeezed in when they return to live action.
While CBS has never had a problem fitting in the taped shots, much of those logistical gymnastics are removed.
"Without commercials, it actually makes it easier," said Lance Barrow, the network's coordinating producer for golf.
The bigger problem for CBS will be finding a storyline that interests viewers if it's not Tiger Woods or John Daly. The network won't be as concerned the first two days, when it does the production for USA's coverage, because the story is already set - Arnold Palmer, playing in his 50th, and probably last, Masters.
CBS already plans on opening Saturday's show with a Palmer retrospective. CBS took him out on the course to serve as the backdrop for the sharing of 50 years worth of memories, including four wins. Later in the telecast, CBS will take a look back at his Thursday and Friday rounds.
"If he did make the cut, that would be the biggest story ever in the history of golf," Barrow said. "It might be something we will never reach again. I mean, it would be unbelievable.
"Sometimes, people write that we show too much Tiger. Let me tell you, if he made the cut, Saturday and Sunday you would see every golf shot Arnold Palmer hit."
