Even as we push on into late fall and early winter, there’s still quite a bit of golf left for the avid fan.

First, there’s the PGA Tour’s qualifying school. It starts Wed, and there will be coverage on The Golf Channel Saturday and Sunday from 4 - 7 pm and Monday from 3:30 - 7 pm. But the entire event is 108 holes over six days. That’s a lot of drama.

The LPGA Q School takes place Wednesday, November 30 – Sunday, December 4, but apparently none of it will be televised.

Across the Pond, the European Tour has the UBS Hong Kong Open this week, followed by the Dubai World Championship the following weekend. Both are broadcast on the Golf Channel, albeit at awkward times: 3am - 8am. You really have to be a fan ...

And a little more on the silly side, there’s this week’s Chevron World Challenge, and 18 player charity event hosted by Tiger in Thousand Oaks, California. It’ll be on The Golf Channel Thursday and Friday from 3 - 6, and then on NBC on the weekend at the same time.

Here’s an article with a Hank Haney interview on how he fixed Rush Limbaugh’s game.

I personally found the Limbaugh project to be entertaining. But then, I find Rush on the radio to be entertaining. I’m not a dittohead by any means—I don’t like his stand on teachers, naturally—but he is entertaining.

Hank Haney ... if you’re listening ... what you need to do now is to have the GolfBlogger Project. Sign me up!!

I’ve finally managed to watch my recorded episodes of the Golf Channel’s latest productions: The Haney Project - Rush Limbaugh and The Morning Drive. A few reactions:

Rush Limbaugh is Hank Haney’s third televised golf reclamation project, following on the heels of Charles Barkley and Ray Romano. I wasn’t a fan of either of the first two seasons, and I didn’t see any reason why the third season would make me a more regular viewer. I will say, however, that Rush looks like he’ll be a better student than either of the first two. He doesn’t have the cringe-inducing swing of Charles Barkley, nor the smarmy, whining attitude of Ray Romano. His swing looks like a lot of guys I see on the course, and his attitude is pretty good: he said at the outset that he really wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to try to maximize his potential.

Thanks to Rush’s millions of fans, this season of the Haney Project could potentially break all Golf Channel records. Here’s The Golf Channel’s official statement:

Tuesday’s season premiere of The Haney Project, Golf Channel’s hit original series featuring Rush Limbaugh, was the most-watched season premiere of any Golf Channel original series since NBA Hall-of-Famer Charles Barkley originally launched The Haney Project in March 2009.  Limbaugh’s premiere episode delivered a 0.3 household rating and 310,000 average total viewers.*
“We’re extremely pleased with the launch of our third season of The Haney Project,” said Tom Stathakes, Golf Channel senior vice president of programming, production and operations.  “This is a testament to the gains we’ve made to our original programming and that, in addition to great golf competition, Golf Channel is a viable choice for people seeking great entertainment.”

On the other hand, it’s sad that a “hit” for The Golf Channel is a 0.3 household share.

The Morning Drive reminds me of a golf-focused version of Mike and Mike—two guys discussing sports and the news in a give and take format. The couple of hours I saw were nothing special, but it was certainly more interesting than another round of Good Morning America or the Today Show. There were some decent phone interviews; the analysis was reasonable, and it wasn’t all about golf. I actually think there’s some potential for the show to grow and find an audience—however small (and small it likely will be).

Unfortunately, I won’t see The Morning Drive very often. My work day at school begins at 7 am.

My suggestion for ALL of the Golf Channel’s productions: invest in some infrastructure and upgrade the production values.

While I’ve never had the spare cash to get a subscription to satellite radio, I’ve always thought it would be nice to get the PGA Tour channel on XM/Sirius. The station broadcast 26 hours of tournament coverage each week, and has a spate of morning shows. In fact, GolfBlogger.Com was lucky enough to get a live mention on the air on that channel a couple of years ago.

I had always assumed that the channel was a product of the PGA Tour itself, but it turns out that was in error. Steve Ellling of CBS Sports recently reported that XM/Sirius had come to an agreement with the PGA Tour to extend their broadcast agreement. Under the new terms, however, the PGA Tour for the first time will pay for the on-air talent, and for a part of the production costs. It seems that the PGA Tour decided that the XM/Sirius channel was to valuable to let it go.

Here’s hoping that Directv decides the same thing about the Golf Channel.

The Sports Business Journal is reporting that Directv and The Golf Channel’s owner, Comcast, are “far apart” on a new agreement. The current contract ends Dec. 31.

According to the article, The Golf Channel is among several DirecTV plans to drop for underperformance.

... Golf Channel’s timing could not be worse. This fall, DirecTV executives have been open about their plans to drop less popular channels and already have showed that they plan to take a hard line in dealing with them. DirecTV already dropped two Comcast-owned channels, Versus and G4, this year over rate increases and channel positioning. Comcast also owns Golf Channel, and if it gets dropped by DirecTV, the move could signal another sign of a larger dispute between the country’s two biggest distributors: DirecTV and Comcast.

“There will be other channels that are going to come down — channels that aren’t watched as much will come down,” said DirecTV’s Derek Chang during a discussion about dealing with increased programming costs at an industry conference in November. “If we’re going to do anything to try and mitigate the rise in costs on programming that we consider ‘must have,’ it’s got to come from somewhere. Otherwise, bills for customers will continue to go up.”

For their part, the DirecTV website is terse about the future of golf among its offerings:

We’re Negotiating to Keep the Golf Channel on DIRECTV

We are in discussions to renew the Golf Channel contract as we do year-round with a variety of networks when their contracts are up. There are no plans to take the channel down at this time.

Please enjoy your DIRECTV® service as you do today. There is nothing you need to do at this time.

For the latest updates, please refer to this website.

We thank you for being a DIRECTV customer and will continue to provide you with the superior television entertainment that you have come to know and rely on.

I’m a longtime DirecTV subscriber and while losing The Golf Channel will make me sad, it in no way will get me to go back to Comcast (unless it somehow comes up with the exclusive rights to the Majors). I had such a bad experience with Comcast six years ago that I switched to DirecTV and have never looked back. I’ve found that virtually none of the cable tv propaganda about satellite unreliability is true. Over the last six years, I can count the number of times I’ve lost the satellite feed on one hand. I lost my Comcast feed more often than that every year.

The real loser in this could be the LPGA, which has a Golf Channel exclusive. DirecTV apparently represents some 15 million of TGC’s 83 million subscribers. That’s nearly 20 percent of the total. It makes me wonder if the LPGA lawyers were clever enough to have an escape clause if The Golf Channel fell below a certain subscriber threshold.

As for the PGA Tour and Euro Tour events on Golf Channel—I’ll miss them. But I can still catch leaderboards and highlights on the internet. But lets hope it doesn’t come to that. Comcast needs to back off on its pricing demands. A channel that comes in 80th out of 88 prime time networks can’t go about demanding too much.

It seems that starting January 3, the Golf Channel plans a morning news show, called “Morning Drive.” It’ll focus, naturally enough, on Golf, but also feature general news and weather. The hosts will be Erik Kuselias, who has hosted NASCAR Now and College Football Live on ESPN, and Gary Williams, who has been doing Sirius/XM’s Mad Dog Radio.

The two are real hosts, and hopefully, production values will be top notch. I like the idea. Unfortunately, since I’m out the door to work by 6, it’s not likely I’ll ever see it.

I don’t find the fall series tournaments particularly compelling, but today’s Frys.Com Open is on my watch list. Rocco Mediate—one of the more personable players on Tour—is leading by three shots after three eagles in three days. That’s the first time that’s been done since Tiger in the 1998 Sprint International. He had a hole in one on Thursday.

If Mediate wins, it’ll be his first in eight years. Rocco, if you will recall, took Tiger to extra holes at the 2008 US Open at Torrey Pines.

The Frys.Com Open is on from 4 - 7 on The Golf Channel. That’s after the NFL game I want to watch this week, so I’ll spend the day grading papers and watching television sports.