NBC won't forget about Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong rule.

That's what all the television ratings numbers and Web hit counters tell us.

It's what NBC understands.

Tiger Woods is out in the second round of the Accenture Match Play Championship, beaten Thursday by South Africa's Tim Clark. That means Woods won't be playing Saturday and Sunday during live network television coverage of the event, but he'll still be prominent on NBC.

"We'll have to deal with showing what happened to Tiger because this has gone from being a golf tournament to a news event," NBC golf producer Tommy Roy said. "Our weekend telecast will have to deal with showing what happened to Tiger. It will be our duty."

Wednesday's first-round coverage of the match-play event resulted in the highest first-round ratings ever for the Golf Channel. Golf Channel President Page Thompson said the 1.8 rating was up 50% from the same round a year ago. "It was exceptional," Thompson said.

Armstrong's participation in last week's Amgen Tour of California produced some impressive gains for both Versus, the cable network that televised the race, and for a couple of cycling websites. Versus Executive Vice President Marc Fein said the station had 4.3 million viewers last year for the entire race. This year it was 10.5 million viewers.

Cyclingnews.com, based in England, reported it had 2.8 million page views during the Feb. 17 Stage 3, the second most in the site's history behind only one Tour de France mountain stage day. On a typical February day, the site receives 800 page views a day.

VeloNews.com, another popular website for cycling news, recorded a 104% increase in unique page views over last year's Tour of California and over 40,000 more clicks on race video.

But what will happen with each sport when Woods and Armstrong are gone?

Irving Rein, a Northwestern University professor and co-author of the book "The Elusive Fan: Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Marketplace," said there is no magic formula for ensuring continued attention for a sport when a Tiger or Lance walks away.

"We live in a time of star power," Rein said. "Television now tends to tell a story and the idea of an athlete needing a story line in sports has really taken over.

"The NFL draft is a classic example of star manufacturing. They take obscure college kids and lionize them in the draft process so when these players go to individual teams, fans have already identified with them.