Tiger Woods Gives Two Interviews on His Sex Life...And Relatively Few Notice

Whether by design or not, Tiger Woods' two interviews that aired Sunday night were very well timed to generate as little publicity and attention as possible.

Let's do the math. The country was enthralled by awaiting the returns of the landmark health care bill while Tiger's interviews, one on ESPN and one on the Golf Channel, were airing...both with little advanced notice.

Oh, and just in that statement alone, we see what part of the strategy seems to be...two interviews airing at exactly the same time on different cable networks? Neither one, by definition, will receive the type of scrutiny than they would have had they played separately.

Sunday night, too, was after a thrilling weekend of NCAA tournament action, which most of the nation's sports fans were enraptured by.

Throw in the fact that 60 Minutes, one of the most highly rated and influential newsmagazines on television, was aired opposite the Tiger Woods interviews, and we all can see that Woods and his advisors, well, finally did something right.

The fact is, Tiger Woods was going to have to conduct interviews, not just on his upcoming return to golf, but also on the multiple sordid extramarital affairs that came to light over the past several months. He was not going to be able to get away with the canned speech that he gave a few weeks back.

The drumbeat was only going to continue, particularly as salacious stories continued to trickle, if not flow, out.

But now Tiger Woods can honestly say that, hey, he sat down for not one, but two interviews, and that they both were aired on national cable stations. What more does the public want?

The fact is, those hoping for Tiger Woods to go on Oprah Winfrey to bare his soul, or to go on Barbara Walters and cry, were never going to get what they wanted. There really is nothing to be gained for Tiger by going on and making himself the center of a major television event that didn't take place on the golf course.

He did the only thing he really could do, which was grant the interviews in such a fashion as to severely minimize their impact.

The irony is that the interviews themselves will not contain anything particularly newsworthy beyond Tiger's statement that he 'was living a lie', when it came to his extracurricular activity. And while 'original mistress (at least to the public knowledge) Rachel Uchitel seems intent on keeping herself in the news, Tiger Woods has just taken a major step towards putting the whole thing behind him.

Of course, a relative few noticed the Woods interviews themselves...and that, really, was the objective.

Source: Bob Harig, "Tiger Woods Interview Won't Appease Everyone", espn.com