Anyone who owns a TV and a firearm realizes that shows about shooting are conspicuously absent.
I’ve heard people make comment that the reason shooting competitions don’t make TV is because they are “boring” or don’t have “spectator appeal.” Yet we have things like golf and bowling on TV. Why?
These sports organizations have managed to convince television networks that these activities will bring an audience and the networks have convinced their advertisers of the same. The organizers of these televised sports have found a way to video their respective sport to make them appeal to a wide enough audience. There are enough regular viewers to keep the broadcasts going.
That is the only reason any sports show makes it on television.
If, and only if, we as shooters can convince the networks that competitive marksmanship has the same appeal, we will have a shooting program.
Consider that a show with less than 20 million viewers enjoys a prime time slot on a major TV network (CBS, ABC, NBC). The Super Bowl, which enjoys the largest audience of *any* show has just over 100 million viewers.
There are 80 million gun owners in this country. What would happen if the gun owners asked for a shooting show? The so-called anti-gun media will not ignore the repeated requests of tens of millions of viewers. It would be financial suicide.
When enough people make enough requests for shooting shows, we will have them. If the requests never materialize, then the current venue will remain.
It’s as simple as that.
Firearm User Network 
Doug
Oct 08, 2009 @ 09:55:09
I offer another reason we may not see shooting events on regular TV – guns are political, golf is not. The NRA has so politicized anything to do with guns that I can understand why a network that must satisfy so many other audiences (and audiences that are drifting away) would stay away from anything highly political.
I think the comparison to golf is also a bit of a stretch. While there may be more gun owners than golf fans, you find more golf fans on the links every weekend than you find shooters at the range. People golf and they can look at Tiger Woods and think ‘yeah, I could do that, in fact back in ’88 I made that same shot’. I’m not sure even avid shooters think that way.
You may also be seeing something akin to multiple markets. Golfers golf, bowlers bowl, shooters shoot pistols, shotguns, rifles, air guns, fast draw, cowboy, etc, etc, etc. Someone who’s deep into fast pistol shoots with multiple targets may not care a whit about skeet and vice versa. By the time you split that 80 million into ‘shooters who like watch shooting’ and then into the different markets, even if there was demand, it might only be enough for cable specialty shows.
Interesting post, thanks.
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