Masters changes CBS TV broadcast after Saturday rainout, fan outrage

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Sometimes when it rains, it pours. And sometimes, as with Saturday’s CBS broadcast from the Masters, it just stinks.

After a year of preparation, months of promotional advertising and a week of excitement, CBS’s Saturday Masters broadcast lasted just 15 minutes.

There were two culprits. The first was the rain, which fell in large, unrelenting globs at Augusta National and eventually drowned the golf course, rendering even the club’s prodigious SubAir system helpless against the water. Cameras captured water pooling on the putting surfaces and in the fairways, even as maintenance crews were dispatched onto the course between every group to aid against such efforts. Not even the green jackets could argue the dreariness of Saturday’s weather. The majority of them retreated to the clubhouse as the heavens opened in the afternoon, sending the scent of a large, wood-burning fire wafting over the golf course.

The second culprit was timing. The Masters managed to record a full morning’s worth of play on Saturday, but by the time CBS came on the air at 3 p.m. local, the situation had turned considerably worse. The rain fell at its heaviest in the 20 minutes preceding the network’s broadcast window, and by the time the broadcast started, it was clear the tournament could not go on for much longer.

Tournament officials suspended play before CBS even had time to reach its second commercial break, officially halting the tournament for the remainder of Saturday at 3:15 p.m. ET, 15 minutes after the network first went on air.

At the time, it was an unlucky break for CBS, whose broadcast window is dictated by the Masters. Though the network surely would have preferred to snag a few extra hours of Saturday Masters TV ratings by going on the air early, its schedule remains at the whims of Augusta National leadership. With ESPN owed airtime on Saturday morning following a separate rain delay on Friday afternoon, the logistics likely grew too confusing to solve.

Still, that decision left several hours on Saturday in which the Masters was being played, with leaders on the course, without TV coverage to support it. The tournament was still accessible to fans through the Masters website and apps, but some fans still weren’t happy about it.

The good news came soon after, though, when the Masters announced it had adjusted CBS’s TV schedule for Sunday’s 30-hole marathon. Now, the network will air live coverage of the conclusion of the third round beginning at 8:30 a.m. ET on Sunday morning. Under the updated broadcast schedule, CBS scooped up an extra three hours of Masters Sunday coverage, starting with the resumption of play in the morning and continuing through the end of the third round around noon.

Once the third round ends, CBS will go off the air again, but only for a short while, returning back for its originally scheduled broadcast start time of 2 p.m. ET. Including the network’s previously scheduled five-hour coverage window on Sunday, CBS will now cover close to nine hours of Masters coverage on Sunday at Augusta National. That number amounts to just 15 minutes of airtime fewer than the network was allotted at the beginning of the week between Saturday and Sunday.

Tournament organizers were likely responsible for the change as part of a broader effort to reschedule most of the tournament’s weekend play to Sunday. Traditionally, when weather events occur, the tournament works with CBS to ensure the network receives the full allotment of its scheduled airtime, helping to maximize audiences and advertising revenue for both parties. CBS has been the Masters broadcast partner for 68 years, and strong ratings are in the best interests of both parties.

Over at CBS, the decision comes as highly welcome (if unsurprising) news. The network has added extended weekend broadcast windows in past Masters that have been affected by the weather. A similar situation arose most recently in 2019, when storms led to a marathon finish on Sunday. In that year, CBS was on the air for most of the day at Augusta National, scoring record ratings along the way as Tiger Woods scooped his 15th major championship title.

Augusta National has historically kept tight restrictions on the Masters’ television presentation. Over the years, the broadcast window for the event has remained comparatively small to others in golf, while the club has been slow to adopt certain commonplace technologies and advancements. In one example of Augusta National’s picky tastes towards TV coverage, the club didn’t allow its front nine to be shown on television until 1997.

So far, the Masters has proven a slight ratings disappointment, with numbers dipping from last year’s Tiger Woods return. CBS hopes to right the ship with the mega-cast, which will dominate most waking hours of Masters Sunday. That, of course, is assuming the golf course isn’t still underwater from Saturday’s storms. Here’s hoping that’s the case.