CBS Sports

Fall’s upfront would have been a lot worse were it not for leveraging NFL packages with advertisers, and the league continues to pull them in in all sizes.

Jim Nantz has seen his share of magical moments and sendoffs during a career that has spanned nearly 40 years. He could get one of his own as he prepares to call his final NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Not only is the Final Four in Nantz’s adopted hometown of Houston, but with the University of Houston as one of the top seeds, Nantz could get to call his alma mater playing for a national title. (Erin Hooley/AP).

CBS Sports said it plans to launch the Golazo Network,  a free, 24-hour free streaming network dedicated to soccer, on April 11. The network will be available on Paramount+, Pluto TV, the CBS Sports App and CBSSports.com at launch.

CBS Sports’ broadcast of Kansas City’s AFC Championship Game win over Cincinnati on Sunday averaged 53.124 million viewers per Nielsen finals, up 11% from last year’s AFC contest to mark the most-watched NFL Conference Championship in four years and the most-watched television program on any network since the 2022 Super Bowl. (Earlier in the day, over on Fox, the Eagles’ NFC Championship win averaged 47.5 million viewers.)

It starts in prime time on Saturday night from Torrey Pines, an early finish to avoid the NFL conference championship games. And for the first time, CBS will have the entire FedEx Cup playoffs as part of an alternating schedule with NBC. CBS, which for years has carried the most tournaments, this year will have 23.

CBS, Fox and NBC will all be paying tribute to former coach and Hall of Fame sportscaster John Madden when they broadcast National Football League games on Thanksgiving Day. Each network will lead into their games with a recording of Madden — who called 20 Thanksgiving Day games over the course of his career — talking about the relationship the holiday has with football. Each network will also create segments about the coach that will appear during their games.

Jim Nantz has been a part of the CBS coverage of the tournament since 1986. He was the studio host for five years before calling his first Final Four in 1991. The 63-year old Nantz will remain the lead voice of the network’s NFL coverage, along with leading its golf team. Successor Ian Eagle has been with CBS since 1998.

Sir Nick Faldo is planning to retire after 16 years in the booth with CBS Sports and the Golf Channel. The 64-year-old broadcaster shared the news in a signed letter he posted to Twitter on Tuesday — revealing his last day in the booth will be on Aug. 7 for The Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, NC. Trevor Immelman — a South African who won the Masters in 2008 — will replace Faldo next year alongside Jim Nantz, according to Sports Business Journal.

Bob Fishman

Fishman will direct the TBS coverage of Saturday’s national semifinals and Monday night’s title game. Fishman, along with the top team of Jim Nantz, Bill Raftery, Grant Hill and Tracy Wolfson, have done all of Duke’s games so far. Not many people might know who Fishman is, but he has directed some of the most memorable events on CBS Sports since moving from the news division in 1975.

Sean McManus is not retiring. Every couple of years, this rumor gains traction. It happened in the run-up to Super Bowl 50 nearly six years ago. What better way to cap off a legendary sports media career than to executive produce the NFL’s 50th Super Bowl? It’s happening again this year, as the 66-year-old executive who essentially saved CBS Sports marks a career milestone. He has overseen one of the most enduring sports brands for a quarter of a century. But McManus, one of the most respected executives in all of sports, is no closer to retiring today than he was five years ago.

CBS Sports said long-time director Bob Fishman will retire following next year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship. In 50 years with CBS, Fishman has directed nearly every sport televised by the network and has been the lead director on college basketball since 1982. He also directs CBS Sports’ No. 2 NFL broadcast team.

Executives from Fox Sports and CBS Sports are among those predicting a sports production future with dramatically reduced onsite staff, greater operational efficiencies and cost savings, though with a fallout of job losses for mobile production personnel.

A winner of 16 Sport Emmys, he produced the groundbreaking pregame show The NFL Today and the highest-rated Olympics ever, the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, at CBS.

Brown hosted Fox’s pregame for the 2002 Super Bowl, which occurred nearly five months after 9/11. With the coronavirus pandemic still at the forefront, Brown realizes Sunday’s Super Bowl Today show could offer the same opportunities, but in a different manner.

New camera angles and innovative AR graphics will mark Tampa’s Super Bowl LV with a sparser crowd allowing for novel camera positions and experimentation.

Keeping announcers separated until game day has been CBS’ protocol this season. With many of the ancillary events surrounding Super Bowl week either canceled or happening virtually — along with the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers remaining at their own complexes to practice — the week is nearly structured like their first meeting on Nov. 29. Tony Romo and Jim Nantz were inseparable when CBS broadcast the Super Bowl two years ago. Next week, they won’t see each other until they are in the broadcast booth a couple hours prior to kickoff.

TV networks are feeling the strains of disappointing NFL ratings, as they are forced to restructure deals with advertisers to make up for the smaller audience, and their opportunity to make money off remaining games during the lucrative holiday season narrows.

CBS Sports’ production team took home the Sports Emmy for Outstanding Live Sports Special for last year’s coverage of the Masters golf tournament. This weekend, the team will get a chance for a repeat with what is typically the first major of the season but was rescheduled due to the coronavirus pandemic. “To coin a phrase,” says CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus, “this is going to be a Masters unlike any other. The course is going to look different. It’s going to feel different. And there are going to be no patrons, so it gives us an opportunity maybe for some new and different camera angles. We’re excited about that.”

On a conference call with reporters Tuesday, CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus said that NFL ad sales at this point are “pacing at the exact level we paced at last year, and last year was an incredibly successful year for us.”

The five-hour block of programming titled “Portraits in Black” will examine seminal events from the past as well as current events, including the response by athletes following the shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin.

In announcing the broadcast and productions plans for the return to golf, CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus said the network would have what solo announcer Jim Nantz dubbed a “confession cam.” Players would walk into a tent during the round and talk briefly into a remote camera. McManus also said the network has been working more aggressively to have players wear microphones, and that CBS already has received commitments from some players.

In the early moments of the annual game to lure advertisers to the Super Bowl, ViacomCBS is first and long.

Signing 60 to 70 automakers, snack manufacturers and tech marketers to sponsor the biggest TV event of the year is never an easy task. But doing so will be tougher for the newly-merged media conglomerate, owing to a coronavirus pandemic that has thrown the sports business into disarray and forced advertisers to tighten their purse strings. ViacomCBS, which has the rights to broadcast the extravaganza in 2021, will have to reassure would-be Big Game sponsors about the NFL’s ability to mount a new season even as it tries to get the best prices possible.

Miss America in 1971, George joined Brent Musburger and Irv Cross in 1975 on The NFL Today. Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder later was added to the cast. She spent three seasons on the live pregame show, returned in 1980 and left in 1983, winning plaudits for her warmth of her interviews with star athletes. She also covered horse racing, hosted the entertainment show People and co-anchored the CBS Morning News. She was 70.

Costs are inhibiting a flood of 4K sports production, but 1080p HDR offers numerous practical advantages, among them that the improvement in picture quality is more readily apparent to consumers than the gain from 4K resolution. Above, Sony tested an 8K camera at the Sony Open in Hawaii last year, but doesn’t expect 8K to be used for regular sports production for several years.

CBS Sports has let go of its No. 2 NFL game analyst, Dan Fouts, The Post has learned. CBS is now targeting Fox’s second NFL analyst, Charles Davis, according to sources, as a potential replacement. Fox is trying to retain Davis.

For the last three decades, CBS’s Jim Nantz has been the voice in living rooms and restaurant bars and anywhere else fans were watching the two biggest sporting events on the Spring calendar — the Final Four and the Masters over a span of nine days. Now he’s home, like everyone else during the global pandemic of COVID-19. Above, Nantz with Phil Mickelson during an awards ceremony on the 18th green of the Pebble Beach Golf Links in 2019.

The fallout from Thursday’s coronavirus-driven cancellation of the NCAA Division 1 Men’s Tournament will be over $1 billion in ad revenue for CBS and Turner Sports. “There’s no bad guy here,” said one expert, but remedies will almost certainly have to be created.

CBS Sports is making a bid to one-up its competitors in the rapidly developing arena for U.S. sports betting. CBS Sports and British bookmaker William Hill struck a partnership that makes William Hill, which has a sizable U.S. presence, the official sports book and provider of wagering data across all CBS Sports properties.

When CBS Sports closes out its NFL season with Sunday’s Tennessee Titans–Kansas City Chiefs AFC Championship matchup, it will mark the conclusion of one the network’s most technologically innovative campaigns. From the addition of Field Eye (Line-to-Gain camera technology) to an increase in high-speed cameras to more live aerial shots, the CBS Sports team has significantly boosted its NFL production complement this year and will lift equipment levels even higher for its largest production of the year on Sunday in Kansas City.