PROFILE
Harry Donahue hosts the longest running show in the history of NBC Sports Philadelphia
BY MIKE SIELSKI
HARRY DONAHUE WAS SITTING AT THE BAR at a State College hotel in September 2016, nursing a beer, when a surprising thing happened to him. A couple of guys recognized him, but that wasn’t the surprising part. Donahue has been the radio play-by-play voice for Temple football since 1984 and had delivered the day’s sports news for 35 years as an anchor on KYW, and he was in town that weekend to call the Owls’ early-season game against the Nittany Lions. He might have expected to hear a Hey, Harry! from a Temple fan or two who had made the trip to central Pennsylvania. But these two guys at the bar weren’t Temple fans. They were locals, and it was the reason they recognized Donahue that caught his attention and stayed in his memory. “Hey,” one of them said to him, “You’re the guy who does the golf show.” Yes, he is, and if you mention “the golf show” to someone from the Philadelphia area, the likelihood is that the two of you have the same program in mind, Inside Golf, which ranks as one of the great success stories in re26
gional television over the last quarter-century. Having aired for the first time on Jan. 1, 1998, Inside Golf is the longest-running show in the history of NBC Sports Philadelphia (or what used to be Comcast SportsNet), the Delaware Valley’s 24-hour sports network. At a time when companies have been grappling with the question of how to survive and thrive in such a fragmented media world, the program has maintained a firm hold on its demographic: golf aficionados in and around Philadelphia— and a few as far as 200 miles away. “The reach—who’d have thought in Happy Valley you’d get recognized for a golf show on a Penn State football weekend?” said Donahue, who was a frequent panelist on Inside Golf before becoming its host more than a decade ago. “You never know who’s listening or watching or why they’re watching. They’re out there. It’s
the silent … minority? I don’t know.” They’re out there, all right, and they’re loyal. Inside Golf airs four-to-five times a week on NBCSP, though its primary audience is drawn from its slot on Sundays at 10 a.m., and Ken Selinger, the show’s executive producer, estimated that the show reaches 75,000 to 100,000 households each week. It hasn’t changed much since its debut, despite the changes around it, and that consistency has allowed it to stay relevant. “We usually have people who are passionate about the game, and that really helps,” Selinger said. “You’re not going to watch it and hear ridiculous things that make no sense at all. It looks good on the air. It’s not just slopped together, and people don’t think they’re wasting their time. We keep it fresh.” That mission is more challenging these days
