Munich fueled McManus
Dusty Saunders reports on the airwaves
CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus will be among nearly 80,000 people at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, onMonday night watching UConn battle Kentucky for the college basketball crown.
But the 59-year-old McManus won’t be seated in one of the stadium’s luxurious sky boxes.
He will be in the network’s control room— a customary spot for McManus during important CBS Sports telecasts.
McManus long ago gained the reputation as a “hands-on” executive and journalist— the direct result of an emotional experience Sept. 5, 1972.
As a 17-year-old, he spent time in a Munich TV studio, watching his father, the late, legendary broadcaster Jim McKay, provide 14 consecutive hours of coverage on ABC while reporting on the massacre of 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team.
“Being in that studio and watching my dad report on the tragedy obviously shaped my broadcasting career,” McManus said from his New York office.
His career, which included the dual duties of chairman of both CBS News and CBS Sports for six years (2005-11), has given McManus a sense of the importance of television “intimacy,” which he has worked to transfer to the TV sports screen.
Such intimacy can be successful— but expensive.
Witness the $10 billion-plus tab that CBS and Turner Broadcasting paid for dual coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament through 2024.
“Our single, longtime coverage of the NCAA tourney seems like the stone age, compared to the current coverage,” McManus said. “I’ll always remember the complaints CBS would get, particularly during the early rounds, when we hopscotched around the country trying to cover close games. Obviously, such a format irritated many fans.”
McManus chuckles when talking about the rise of “Bracketology,” now played by mil- lions of fans during the NCAA Tournament.
“That’s really become a passion down through the years,” McManus said. “Even housewives who didn’t care much about college basketball are now involved in picking tournament brackets.”
After the new NCAA championship team clips down the nets Monday night, McManus will concentrate on another prized CBS Sports attraction.
“I know many fans think the Masters won’t be the same this year without TigerWoods,” he said. “Of course, he’ll be missed, both as a player and personality. But the Masters will remain the most watched television golf event because of its history and the play of numerous star golfers. Ultimately, it’s the game that counts.”
In February, McManus and CBS Sports added another ma- jor product to its broadcasting lineup: eight weeks of Thursday night NFL games this season.
CBS— somewhat surprisingly— beat NBC, ABC and Fox in a competitive bidding war, paying between $250 million and $300 million for the one-year contract and an option year.
Many media experts didn’t consider CBS a major player in the bidding because the network has the strongest primetime entertainment schedule, which includes a highly rated Thursday night lineup.
“I agreed with LesMoonves (the CBS Corp. chairman), that the Thursday night NFL schedule should be the network’s highest single priority,” McManus said. “So we simply went after it.”
McManus has “no idea” about the details of the Thursday lineup of games, which will be announced by the NFL in a couple of weeks. “But I do know it will contain worthwhile games. The NFL always does a good job scheduling special attractions.”
How about Denver vs. Seattle? “That would be a pretty good matchup for us,” McManus said, chuckling. Longtime local journalist Dusty Saunders writes about the sports media each Monday in The Denver Post. Contact him at tvtime@comcast.net.