CBS has broadcast the Travelers Championship for 19 consecutive years, and that streak ends in 2026—not because CBS wanted out, but because NBC needed in.

The 2026 Travelers Championship will air on NBC rather than its longtime home on CBS, Josh Carpenter of Sports Business Journal reported on January 20. NBC previously had only one Signature Event on the 2026 schedule; now it has two. The shift traces back to a crisis that began 5,000 miles away in Hawaii.

When the PGA Tour cancelled The Sentry in October 2025 due to drought conditions and a billionaire water dispute that rendered Kapalua’s Plantation Course unplayable, NBC’s Signature Event count dropped to one. The Arnold Palmer Invitational stood alone, and contractual math demanded a correction. The Travelers Championship provided it, while creating something the original schedule never offered: a Northeast corridor where logistics and storytelling converge.

NBC will broadcast the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills on Long Island from June 15–21, then pivot roughly 100 miles northeast to TPC River Highlands for the Travelers Championship the following week. The geographic proximity unlocks efficiencies that cross-country Tour travel cannot match.

Production trucks stay parked, broadcast towers remain erected, and technical infrastructure avoids the teardown-and-rebuild cycle that typically accompanies week-to-week transitions. Industry estimates suggest regional clustering cuts production costs by 40–60% compared to standard cross-country hauls, freeing budget that NBC can redirect toward enhanced camera coverage or drone technology. The savings are structural, not incidental.

Beyond logistics, NBC’s announcing team transforms from visiting broadcasters into regional insiders. Dan Hicks, NBC’s lead play-by-play voice since 2000, lives in Southport, Connecticut. Brad Faxon built his playing career across New England fairways before joining NBC as an analyst. Notah Begay III won the 2000 Canon Greater Hartford Open—the Travelers Championship’s predecessor—for his final PGA Tour victory. All three now call an event they know intimately, from the wind patterns off the Connecticut River to the subtle breaks on TPC River Highlands’ greens.

NBC can also cross-promote a Yankees-Red Sox Sunday Night Baseball showdown at Fenway Park on Travelers Sunday, an ecosystem advantage CBS could not replicate from the same footprint.

The network gains more than a make-good event; it gains a regional stronghold. But what NBC acquires, CBS relinquishes.

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Jim Nantz and CBS lose Travelers Championship after 19-year run

The displacement carries weight beyond broadcast logistics.

CBS has carried the Travelers Championship continuously since 2007, the longest unbroken stretch in the event’s history and one that surpassed previous runs from 1984–1999 and 1970–1981. Jim Nantz’s four-decade tenure as CBS’s voice of golf underscores what the network temporarily surrenders—a tournament his 18th-hole calls helped define. Nantz has anchored CBS’s Masters coverage since 1989 and called the PGA Championship for 35 consecutive years. Fans expecting his familiar cadence on final-round Sundays at TPC River Highlands will instead hear Hicks, a capable successor but a different voice carrying different memories.

The arrangement’s duration remains uncertain, as Sports Business Journal reported that discussions did not clarify whether NBC’s Travelers coverage extends beyond 2026. The Tour’s media deals run through 2030, leaving room for further recalibration depending on how both networks assess the experiment.

What began as crisis management—a Hawaii drought forcing NBC to scramble for Signature Event inventory—has crystallized into something more deliberate. The network now controls consecutive weeks in the Northeast, anchored by a major championship and followed by a full-field Signature Event. Production economics favor the configuration, announcing talent suits the geography, and cross-promotion opportunities multiply. CBS retains the Masters, the PGA Championship, and the bulk of the FedExCup Playoffs, but for one week in late June 2026, a tournament it nurtured for nearly two decades will carry a different network’s logo.

Efficiency, rather than sentiment, determined the outcome.