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''NFL on CBS'' is an
American television Television is one of the Mass media in the United States, major mass media outlets in the United States. In 2011, 96.7% of households owned television sets; about 114,200,000 American households owned at least one television set each in August ...
sports presentation show broadcast by CBS. It aired from September 30, 1956 to January 23, 1994. The show returned since September 6, 1998. The branding is used for the presentation of the
National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National ...
. From
2014 The year 2014 was marked by the surge of the Western African Ebola epidemic, West African Ebola epidemic, which began in 2013, becoming the List of Ebola outbreaks, most widespread outbreak of the Ebola, Ebola virus in human history, resul ...
to
2017 2017 was designated as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development by the United Nations General Assembly. Events January * January 1 – Istanbul nightclub shooting: A gunman dressed as Santa Claus opens fire at the ...
, CBS also broadcast ''Thursday Night Football'' games during the first half of the NFL season, through a production partnership with
NFL Network NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League NTP and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and N ...
.


History

CBS' coverage began on September 30,
1956 Events January * January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan after 57 years. * January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian Missionary, missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, E ...
(the first regular season broadcast was a game between the visiting
Washington Redskins The Washington Commanders are a professional American football team based in the Washington metropolitan area. The Commanders compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East ...
against the
Pittsburgh Steelers The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh. The Steelers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC North, North division. Founded in 1933 P ...
), before the
1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 1970 Tonghai earthquake, Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli ...
AFL–NFL merger The AFL–NFL merger was the merger of the two major professional American football leagues in the United States at the time: the National Football League (NFL) and the American Football League (AFL). It paved the way for the combined league, wh ...
. Prior to
1968 Events January–February * January 1968, January – The I'm Backing Britain, I'm Backing Britain campaign starts spontaneously. * January 5 – Prague Spring: Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Cze ...
, CBS had an assigned crew for each NFL team. As a result, CBS became the first network to broadcast some NFL regular season games to selected television markets across the country. From
1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 1970 Tonghai earthquake, Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli ...
until the end of the 1993 season, when Fox won the broadcast television contract to that particular conference, CBS aired NFL games from the
National Football Conference The National Football Conference (NFC) is a conference of the National Football League (NFL), the highest level of professional American football in the United States. The NFC and its counterpart, the American Football Conference (AFC), each h ...
. Since
1975 It was also declared the ''International Women's Year'' by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe. Events January * January 1 – Watergate scandal (United States): John N. Mitchell, H. R. ...
, game coverage has been preceded by
pre-game show A pre-game, pregame, or pre-match show is a television or radio presentation that occurs immediately before the live broadcast of a major sporting event. They typically feature previews and analysis relating to upcoming games (either a larger fix ...
'' The NFL Today'', which features game previews, extensive analysis and interviews.


1950s

In August 1956, the
DuMont Television Network The DuMont Television Network (also the DuMont Network, DuMont Television, DuMont/Du Mont, or (incorrectly) Dumont ) was one of America's pioneer commercial television networks, rivaling NBC and CBS for the distinction of being first overall in ...
, the NFL's primary television partner, ended network operations after years of decline. DuMont had already sold the rights to the NFL Championship to NBC in 1955, and when DuMont ended its regular season coverage, CBS acquired the rights. CBS's first attempts to broadcast the
NFL on television Television coverage of the National Football League is the subject of the following articles: *NFL on American television *NFL on Canadian television As of the 2024 NFL season, CTV and TSN broadcast Sunday games. '' Monday Night Football'' air ...
were notable for there being no broadcasting contract with the league as a whole. Instead, CBS had to strike deals with individual teams to broadcast games into the teams' own markets, many of which CBS had purchased from the moribund DuMont Television Network. Every club but Cleveland joined forces with CBS. Meanwhile, in order to show regional games to regional audiences, CBS set out to divide its network into nine regional networks: New York,
Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
,
Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...
,
Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
, Washington, Green Bay,
Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
and on the Pacific Coast (
Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
and
San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
). Often the games would be broadcast with "split audio" – that is, a game between two franchises would have the same picture in both teams' "networks" (the visiting team's home city and
affiliates In the broadcasting industry (particularly in North America, and even more in the United States), a network affiliate or affiliated station is a local broadcaster, owned by a company other than the owner of the network, which carries some or al ...
of the home team's "network" beyond a 75-mile radius of the home team's television market). Each team's "network" had different announcers (usually those working in their home markets). The 1957 Pro Bowl was offered to NBC, then CBS. Both declined to carry the game. ABC was then offered to televise and accepted, but could not gain enough clearance of
affiliates In the broadcasting industry (particularly in North America, and even more in the United States), a network affiliate or affiliated station is a local broadcaster, owned by a company other than the owner of the network, which carries some or al ...
in time to make it a profitable venture. Thus they also dropped out and the game was not televised. By
1959 Events January * January 1 – Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. * January 2 – Soviet lunar probe Luna 1 is the first human-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reaches the ...
, CBS had at least 11 teams under contract. The
Cleveland Browns The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. The Browns compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC North, North division. The team is named after ...
were still the lone exception.


1960s

1960 saw the addition of a new team to the NFL in the form of the
Dallas Cowboys The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. T ...
. At this point, out of the 13 NFL teams, 10 were aligned with CBS. Two joined forces with NBC (the Colts and the Steelers) and one (the Browns) rejoined its partner, the syndicated Sports Network. Also, the Chicago Cardinals moved to St Louis. So both the expansion Cowboys and relocated Cardinals would cut severely into the monstrous Chicago CBS Network. A silver lining of this however was that WBBM viewers would at least, be able to see at least away games of their Bears on television, after being virtually shut out from pro football telecasts for years. 1961 would serve as the final year that each NFL team would be on their own for television coverage. CBS had 11 teams under contract, including the expansion
Minnesota Vikings The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. The Vikings compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. Founded in 1960 as ...
. NBC continued to televise 13 Sundays involving either the Colts and Steelers (the odd week was when NBC had the
World Series The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB). It has been contested since between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The winning team, determined through a best- ...
) and the Browns again had their deal with Carling Beer and the Sports Network (SNI, forerunner to the Hughes Sports Network). On September 17, 1961,
CBS Sports CBS Sports is the American sports programming division of Paramount Global that is responsible for sports broadcasts carried by its broadcast network CBS and streaming service Paramount+, as well as the operator of its cable channel CBS Sports N ...
broadcast the first remote 15-minute pre-game show, the first of its kind on network sports television; '' Pro Football Kickoff'' originated from NFL stadiums around the country with a comprehensive look at all the day's games. Then-CBS affiliate WISN-TV (channel 12, now an ABC affiliate) in
Milwaukee Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...
opted not to carry that 1961's annual telecast of '' The Wizard of Oz'', running a
Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. They ar ...
football game instead. In contrast to the infamous '' Heidi'' telecast in
1968 Events January–February * January 1968, January – The I'm Backing Britain, I'm Backing Britain campaign starts spontaneously. * January 5 – Prague Spring: Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Cze ...
, the popularity of ''The Wizard of Oz'' as an annual television event at that time was such that the station ran the movie locally at a later date.


The end of each team having its own TV coverage

In
1962 The year saw the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is often considered the closest the world came to a Nuclear warfare, nuclear confrontation during the Cold War. Events January * January 1 – Samoa, Western Samoa becomes independent from Ne ...
, the NFL followed the
American Football League The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, AFL–NFL merger, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Foot ...
's (AFL) suit with its own revenue sharing plan after CBS agreed to telecast all regular season games for an annual fee of US$4.65 million. CBS also acquired the rights to the championship games for
1964 Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 – In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patria ...
and
1965 Events January–February * January 14 – The First Minister of Northern Ireland and the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland meet for the first time in 43 years. * January 20 ** Lyndon B. Johnson is Second inauguration of Lynd ...
for $1.8 million per game, on April 17, 1964. CBS executive vice president James T. Aubrey, Jr., who on May 9, 1963, warned the network's affiliates the high cost of rights for professional sports could price them off television, nevertheless in January 1964 agreed to pay $28.2 million to air
National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National ...
games for two years, spanning 17 games each season. In an interview with ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', Aubrey said regarding the package, "We know how much these games mean to the viewing audience, our affiliated stations, and the nation's advertisers". Along with obtaining the aforementioned rights to the NFL Championship Game, in April 1964, he agreed to extend the deal for another year for a total of $31.8 million. With this deal, CBS now had full rights to air all of the NFL's games.


The fallout from the JFK assassination

On November 24, 1963, just two days after the
assassination Assassination is the willful killing, by a sudden, secret, or planned attack, of a personespecially if prominent or important. It may be prompted by political, ideological, religious, financial, or military motives. Assassinations are orde ...
of
President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television *'' Præsident ...
John F. Kennedy, the NFL played its normal schedule of games. Commissioner
Pete Rozelle Alvin Ray "Pete" Rozelle (; March 1, 1926 – December 6, 1996) was an American professional football executive. Rozelle served as the commissioner of the National Football League (NFL) for nearly thirty years, from January 1960 until his retire ...
said about playing the games: "It has been traditional in sports for athletes to perform in times of great personal tragedy. Football was Mr. Kennedy's game. He thrived on competition." No NFL games were telecast (CBS Chairman Bill Paley ordered no telecasts of any NFL games played during the period of mourning), since on the afternoon of November 22, just after Kennedy had been pronounced dead, CBS President Frank Stanton ordered that all regular programming be pre-empted until after Kennedy was buried at his funeral procession. Normal programming, including the NFL, was replaced by non-stop news coverage, broadcast without commercials.


Half and half format

In
1964 Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 – In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patria ...
, CBS experimented with a "half-and-half" format for their announcers. The first half of each telecast would be called by the home teams' commentators while the second half would be done by the visitors' commentators (this practice would later be revived decades later by the
NFL Network NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League NTP and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and N ...
when replaying preseason games that were broadcast by local stations as opposed to a national network). Also in 1964, CBS ditched the concept of using pooled video and split audio feeds. In
1962 The year saw the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is often considered the closest the world came to a Nuclear warfare, nuclear confrontation during the Cold War. Events January * January 1 – Samoa, Western Samoa becomes independent from Ne ...
and
1963 Events January * January 1 – Bogle–Chandler case: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation scientist Dr. Gilbert Bogle and Mrs. Margaret Chandler are found dead (presumed poisoned), in bushland near the Lane Cove ...
, CBS would provide separate audio for a telecast (for instance, if the
Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. They ar ...
hosted the
Chicago Bears The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. They are one of two remaining ...
, the telecast would have the same video, Chicago area viewers watching on WBBM-TV would hear
Red Grange Harold Edward "Red" Grange (June 13, 1903 – January 28, 1991), nicknamed "the Galloping Ghost" and "the Wheaton Iceman", was an American professional American football, football Halfback (American football), halfback who played for the Chicag ...
and George Connor call the action; meanwhile, viewers in
Milwaukee Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...
and other parts of
Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...
Green Bay itself was blacked out — would hear Ray Scott and Tony Canadeo describe the game). Ray Scott was not a fan of the separate audio concept and temporarily left CBS for a job calling a regional slate of
college football College football is gridiron football that is played by teams of amateur Student athlete, student-athletes at universities and colleges. It was through collegiate competition that gridiron football American football in the United States, firs ...
games for NBC. Ultimately, CBS dumped the four-man crew and resumed the 1962–63 method for the great majority of games in
1965 Events January–February * January 14 – The First Minister of Northern Ireland and the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland meet for the first time in 43 years. * January 20 ** Lyndon B. Johnson is Second inauguration of Lynd ...
,
1966 Events January * January 1 – In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa takes over as military ruler of the Central African Republic, ousting President David Dacko. * January 3 – 1966 Upper Voltan coup d'état: President Maurice Yaméogo i ...
and
1967 Events January * January 1 – Canada begins a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of Canadian Confederation, Confederation, featuring the Expo 67 World's Fair. * January 6 – Vietnam War: United States Marine Corps and Army of ...
. CBS' afternoon
exhibition An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery, park, library, exhibiti ...
telecast of
Dallas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...
vs.
San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
on August 21, 1965, was interrupted by coverage of the Gemini V blastoff, which resulted in a healthy amount of angry phone calls from fans. The game (called by John Roach, Frank Glieber, and Gordy Soltau) was subsequently broadcast on tape-delay basis the following afternoon in a number of cities due to the late start. The August 26 exhibition game between
Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...
-
Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...
game (called by Glieber and
Pat Summerall George Allen "Pat" Summerall (May 10, 1930 – April 16, 2013) was an American professional American football, football player and television sportscaster who worked for CBS Sports, CBS, Fox Sports (USA), Fox, and ESPN Sunday Night Football, ESP ...
) however was not tape-delayed. it was the nightcap of
Art Modell Arthur Bertram Modell (June 23, 1925 – September 6, 2012) was an American businessman, entrepreneur and National Football League (NFL) team owner. He owned the Cleveland Browns franchise for 35 years and established the Baltimore Ravens f ...
's exhibition doubleheader that ran from
1962 The year saw the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is often considered the closest the world came to a Nuclear warfare, nuclear confrontation during the Cold War. Events January * January 1 – Samoa, Western Samoa becomes independent from Ne ...
- 71. On November 25, 1965 (
Thanksgiving Day Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in October and November in the United States, Canada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Germany. It is also observed in the Australian territory ...
), CBS featured the first color broadcast of a regular-season NFL game, the traditional Thanksgiving Day game at
Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...
. It was only the second time that the network's first color mobile unit had been used (it had been used a month earlier to cover the attempted launch of an
Atlas-Agena The Atlas-Agena was an American expendable launch system derived from the SM-65 Atlas missile. It was a member of the Atlas (rocket family), Atlas family of rockets, and was launched 109 times between 1960 and 1978. It was used to launch the first ...
, which was to have been the rendezvous target for the Gemini 6 space mission). Only a handful of games during the rest of the season were shown in color, along with the NFL Western Conference Playoff, the
NFL Championship Game Throughout its history, the National Football league (NFL) and other rival American football leagues have used several different formats to determine their league champions, including a period of inter-league matchups to determine a true national ...
, the Playoff Bowl and the
Pro Bowl The National Football League All-Star Game (1939–1942), Pro Bowl (1951–2022), or Pro Bowl Games (since 2023) is an annual event held by the National Football League (NFL) featuring the league's All-star, star players. The format has changed ...
. In 1966, most of the network's NFL games were broadcast in color, and by
1968 Events January–February * January 1968, January – The I'm Backing Britain, I'm Backing Britain campaign starts spontaneously. * January 5 – Prague Spring: Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Cze ...
, all of the network's NFL telecasts were in color. On December 29, 1965, CBS acquired the rights to the NFL regular season games in 1966 and 1967, with an option to extend the contract through
1968 Events January–February * January 1968, January – The I'm Backing Britain, I'm Backing Britain campaign starts spontaneously. * January 5 – Prague Spring: Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Cze ...
, for $18.8 million per year (in sharp contrast to the $14.1 million per year it paid for the rights in 1964). On February 14, 1966, the rights to the
1966 Events January * January 1 – In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa takes over as military ruler of the Central African Republic, ousting President David Dacko. * January 3 – 1966 Upper Voltan coup d'état: President Maurice Yaméogo i ...
and
1967 NFL Championship Game The 1967 NFL Championship Game, commonly referred to as the Ice Bowl, was the 35th NFL championship, played on December 31 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It determined the NFL's champion, which met the AFL's champion in Super Bo ...
s (the Ice Bowl) were sold to CBS for $2 million per game. 1967 also marked the last year that CBS had separate commentator crews for each team for about 90% to 95% of their NFL games.


The beginning of the Super Bowl era

For the 1966 season, CBS featured a number of regular season games in
color Color (or colour in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though co ...
, stepping up from the sole regular season color telecast in 1965, including all postseason games. The Week 1 game between
Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...
and Green Bay was a national Saturday night telecast. Ray Scott and Pat Summerall called the first half, while Chuck Thompson and Summerall worked the second half. This was a black and white telecast. With Summerall working the Green Bay-Baltimore game and with the
Cowboys A cowboy is a professional pastoralist or mounted livestock herder, usually from the Americas or Australia. Cowboy(s) or The Cowboy(s) may also refer to: Film and television * ''Cowboy'' (1958 film), starring Glenn Ford * ''Cowboy'' (1966 film), ...
idle, Eddie LeBaron filled in for Summerall on the
Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...
- Washington game (alongside Jim Gibbons) for Redskins viewers. Frank Glieber and Warren Lahr called the game for Browns viewers. With Lowell Perry as analyst for the
Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
network in 1966 alongside Joe Tucker, October 2 (where the Steelers played against the Redskins) was most likely the first time ever an
African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...
was in the television booth as on-air talent for a pro football telecast. In Week 5, Pat Summerall was called upon to work Green Bay-
San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
doubleheader game with Ray Scott. While Scott and feature analyst Summerall worked the telecast for national viewing audience, CBS used local audio for San Francisco network with Bob Fouts and Gordy Soltau. Meanwhile, for the
Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...
-Washington game, Jim Gibbons worked with Johnny Sauer for first half while Ed Thilenius worked with Sauer for second half. In Week 11 of the 1966 season, the
Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
-San Francisco game was a regional telecast with a single audio feed. San Francisco play-by-play announcer Bob Fouts worked with Philadelphia analyst Tom Brookshier, while Chick Hearn was called in for CBS Control duty. For that year's Thanksgiving Day game, CBS aired a "day/twilight" doubleheader that were both in color. For the San Francisco-Detroit game, Van Patrick and Frank Gifford called the first half while Bob Fouts and Gifford worked the second half. For the Cleveland-Dallas game, Jack Buck and Pat Summerall were on the call for the first half, while Frank Glieber and Summerall announced the second half. Week 12's Green Bay-Minnesota game was the Sunday doubleheader telecast. Hal Scott called the first half, while Ray Scott called the second half. Tony Canadeo was the analyst for the full game and Jim Morse had CBS Control duties. For Week 12, St. Louis-Dallas was the main doubleheader game with Jack Buck and Eddie LeBaron working the first half and Jack Drees and LeBaron calling the second half. The first
AFL-NFL World Championship Game The Super Bowl is the annual league championship game of the National Football League (NFL) of the United States. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966 (with the exception of the Pro Bowl between the 1967 and 2009 se ...
was played on January 15, 1967. Because CBS held the rights to nationally televise NFL games and NBC had the rights to broadcast AFL games, it was decided by the newly merged league to have both of them cover that first game. Ray Scott, Jack Whitaker, Frank Gifford and Pat Summerall called the game for CBS. 39.9 million viewers would watch Bart Starr's performance in the game that earned him the
MVP MVP most commonly refers to: * Most valuable player, an award, typically for the best performing player in a sport or competition * Minimum viable product, a concept for feature estimating used in business and engineering MVP may also refer to: ...
trophy. NBC did have some problems. The network did not return from a commercial break during
halftime In several team sports, matches are played in two halves. Half-time (also written halftime or half time) is the name given to the interval between the two halves of the match. Typically, after half-time, teams swap ends of the field of play in or ...
in time for the start of the second half; therefore, the first kickoff was stopped by the game's officials and was redone once NBC was back on the air. NBC was also forced to broadcast the game over CBS' feed and cameras (CBS received prerogative to use its feed and camera angles since the
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (also known as the Los Angeles Coliseum or L.A. Coliseum) is a multi-purpose stadium in the Exposition Park, Los Angeles, Exposition Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. Conceived as a hal ...
was home to the NFL's Rams). In other words, NBC's crew had little to no control over how the game was shot. The next three AFL-NFL World Championship Games, later renamed the Super Bowl, were then divided by the two networks: CBS televised Super Bowls II and IV while NBC covered
Super Bowl III Super Bowl III was an American football championship game played on January 12, 1969, at the Miami Orange Bowl, Orange Bowl in Miami, Miami, Florida. It was the third AFL–NFL Championship Game in professional American football, and the fi ...
.


The Ice Bowl

The
1967 NFL Championship Game The 1967 NFL Championship Game, commonly referred to as the Ice Bowl, was the 35th NFL championship, played on December 31 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It determined the NFL's champion, which met the AFL's champion in Super Bo ...
between the
Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. They ar ...
and
Dallas Cowboys The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. T ...
featured play-by-play being done by Ray Scott for the first half and Jack Buck for the second half, while Frank Gifford handled the color commentary for the entire game.
Pat Summerall George Allen "Pat" Summerall (May 10, 1930 – April 16, 2013) was an American professional American football, football player and television sportscaster who worked for CBS Sports, CBS, Fox Sports (USA), Fox, and ESPN Sunday Night Football, ESP ...
and Tom Brookshier served as sideline reporters. Gifford and Summerall were intimately aware of the personality differences that existed between Dallas head coach Tom Landry and Green Bay head coach
Vince Lombardi Vincent Thomas Lombardi ( ; June 11, 1913 – September 3, 1970) was an American professional football coach and executive in the National Football League (NFL). Lombardi is considered by many to be among the greatest coaches and leaders in Ame ...
because they had both played on the New York Giants during Landry's and Lombardi's tenure at the Giants. Over 30 million people would tune in to watch the game. On third-and-goal at the Dallas two-foot line with 16 seconds remaining, Green Bay quarterback Bart Starr went to the sidelines to confer with Lombardi. Starr had asked right guard Jerry Kramer whether he could get enough traction on the icy turf for a wedge play, and Kramer responded with an unequivocal yes. Summerall told the rest of CBS crew to get ready for a roll-out pass, because without any timeouts remaining a failed run play would end the game. Landry would say he expected a rollout pass attempt because an incompletion would stop the clock and allow the Packers one more play on fourth down, either for a touchdown (to win) or a field goal attempt (to tie and send the game into overtime). But Green Bay's pass protection on the slick field had been seriously tested during the game; the Cowboys had sacked Starr eight times. Frank Gifford recounted in his 1993 autobiography ''The Whole Ten Yards'' that he requested and received permission from CBS producers to go into the losing locker room for on-air post-game interviews—a practice unheard of in that era. Gifford, as a
New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. The ...
player and a broadcaster, already enjoyed a friendship with Don Meredith, and he approached the quarterback for his thoughts on the game. The exhausted Meredith, in an emotion-choked voice, expressed pride in his teammates' play, and said, in a figurative sense, that he felt the Cowboys did not really lose the game because the effort expended was its own reward. Gifford wrote that the interview attracted considerable attention, and that Meredith's forthcoming and introspective responses played a part in his selection for ABC's ''
Monday Night Football ''Monday Night Football'' (often abbreviated as ''MNF'') is the branding used for broadcasts of National Football League (NFL) games that air on Monday nights. It originally ran on American Broadcasting Company, ABC from 1970 NFL season, 1970 t ...
'' telecasts three years later. No copy of the complete telecast is known to exist. Some excerpts (such as the announcers' pre-game comments on the field) were saved and are occasionally re-aired in retrospective features. The Cowboys' radio broadcast on KLIF, with Bill Mercer announcing, and the Packers' radio broadcast on WTMJ, with Ted Moore announcing, still exist.


The beginning of the semi-merit system

The August 11, 1968, exhibition game between
Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...
and
Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
was originally scheduled for
Mexico City Mexico City is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Mexico, largest city of Mexico, as well as the List of North American cities by population, most populous city in North America. It is one of the most important cultural and finan ...
, but was cancelled due to growing student demonstrations on August 8. The following day, the game was rescheduled to
Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
. When CBS decided to abandon its practice of using dedicated announcing crews for particular teams in
1968 Events January–February * January 1968, January – The I'm Backing Britain, I'm Backing Britain campaign starts spontaneously. * January 5 – Prague Spring: Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Cze ...
, the network instituted a semi-merit system in its place, with certain crews (such as Ray Scott and Paul Christman or Jack Buck and Pat Summerall) being assigned to each week's most prominent games regardless of the participating teams. On December 22, 1968, CBS interrupted coverage of a Western Conference championship game between the
Minnesota Vikings The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. The Vikings compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. Founded in 1960 as ...
and
Baltimore Colts The Baltimore Colts were a professional American football team that played in Baltimore from 1953 to 1983, when owner Robert Irsay moved the franchise to Indianapolis. The team was named for Baltimore's history of horse breeding and racing. It w ...
in order to show a broadcast from inside the
Apollo 8 Apollo 8 (December 21–27, 1968) was the first crewed spacecraft to leave Sphere of influence (astrodynamics), Earth's gravitational sphere of influence, and the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon. The crew orbited the Moon ten times ...
spacecraft, headed towards the Moon (the first crewed space mission to orbit the Moon, and a major step towards the lunar landing the following July). The interruption began approximately three minutes before halftime of the game, and lasted 17 minutes. CBS showed highlights of the missed action (in which neither team scored) when the network returned to football coverage; nonetheless, the network received approximately 3,000 complaints after the game. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, CBS used a
marching band A marching band is a group of instrumental musicians who play while marching. Historically they were used in armed forces and many marching bands remain military bands. Others are still associated with military units or emulate a military sty ...
-like instrumental arrangement of the song "Confidence" (from Leon Carr's score for the 1964
off-Broadway An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...
musical '' The Secret Life of Walter Mitty'') as the theme for their NFL broadcasts. With 1969 being the final season before the
AFL–NFL merger The AFL–NFL merger was the merger of the two major professional American football leagues in the United States at the time: the National Football League (NFL) and the American Football League (AFL). It paved the way for the combined league, wh ...
, this was also the final season where both leagues would have Thanksgiving doubleheaders. Starting in
1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 1970 Tonghai earthquake, Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli ...
, only two games would be played on
Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in October and November in the United States, Canada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Germany. It is also observed in the Australian territory ...
, with the Lions and
Cowboys A cowboy is a professional pastoralist or mounted livestock herder, usually from the Americas or Australia. Cowboy(s) or The Cowboy(s) may also refer to: Film and television * ''Cowboy'' (1958 film), starring Glenn Ford * ''Cowboy'' (1966 film), ...
hosting those games, and an AFC team rotating as the visiting team between Detroit and Dallas every year.


Monday night games on CBS

During the early 1960s, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle envisioned the possibility of playing at least one game weekly during
prime time Prime time, or peak time, is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for television shows. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to ...
for a greater television audience. An early bid by ABC in 1964 to have the league play a weekly game on Friday nights was abandoned, with critics charging that such telecasts would damage the attendance at high school games. Undaunted, Rozelle decided to experiment with the concept of playing on Monday night, scheduling the
Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. They ar ...
and
Detroit Lions The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. The team plays their home game ...
for a game on September 28, 1964. While the game was not televised, it drew a sellout crowd of 59,203 spectators to Tiger Stadium, the largest crowd to watch a professional football game in
Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...
up to that point. Two years later, Rozelle would build on this success as the NFL began a four-year experiment of playing on Monday night, scheduling a total of five Monday night games on CBS from 1966 to 1969 (including two in 1968). The first prime-time telecast on CBS was on Saturday night, September 10, 1966, with the
Baltimore Colts The Baltimore Colts were a professional American football team that played in Baltimore from 1953 to 1983, when owner Robert Irsay moved the franchise to Indianapolis. The team was named for Baltimore's history of horse breeding and racing. It w ...
opening the season against the
Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. They ar ...
at
Milwaukee Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...
. The first Monday night national telecast was on October 31, 1966, with the St. Louis Cardinals winning at home over the
Chicago Bears The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. They are one of two remaining ...
, 24–17. NBC followed suit in
1968 Events January–February * January 1968, January – The I'm Backing Britain, I'm Backing Britain campaign starts spontaneously. * January 5 – Prague Spring: Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Cze ...
and 1969 with games involving AFL teams. The Chicago-St. Louis game on October 31, 1966, was a national Monday night telecast except in St. Louis. Jack Drees and Frank Gifford called the first half and Lindsey Nelson and Gifford did the second half. This was almost certainly the first NFL prime time game ever televised in
color Color (or colour in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though co ...
. The Green Bay-St. Louis game from a year later on October 30 was likewise, also a prime time "coast to coast" telecast. Jack Drees again did play-by-play for the first half, while this time, Ray Scott did play-by-play for the second half, and Frank Gifford was the analyst for the full game. During subsequent negotiations on a television contract that would begin in
1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 1970 Tonghai earthquake, Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli ...
, Rozelle concentrated on signing a weekly Monday night deal with one of the three major networks. After sensing reluctance from both NBC and CBS in disturbing their regular programming schedules, Rozelle spoke with ABC. Despite the network's status as the lowest- rated network, ABC was also reluctant to enter the risky venture. Only after the independent Hughes Sports Network, an entity bankrolled by reclusive businessman
Howard Hughes Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American Aerospace engineering, aerospace engineer, business magnate, film producer, and investor. He was The World's Billionaires, one of the richest and most influential peo ...
showed interest, did ABC sign a contract for the scheduled games. Speculation was that had Rozelle signed with Hughes, many ABC affiliates would have pre-empted the network's Monday lineup in favor of the games, severely damaging potential ratings. There was even talk that one or two ABC
owned-and-operated station In the broadcasting industry, an owned-and-operated station (frequently abbreviated as an O&O) usually refers to a television or radio station owned by the network with which it is associated. This distinguishes such a station from an network af ...
s would have ditched the network feed to carry the games.


1970s

When the AFL and the NFL officially merged in 1970, the combined league divided its teams into the
American Football Conference The American Football Conference (AFC) is one of the two conferences of the National Football League (NFL), the highest level of professional American football in the United States. The AFC and its counterpart, the National Football Conference ...
(AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). It was then decided (officially announced on January 26, 1970) that CBS would televise all NFC teams (including playoff games) while NBC would carry games from all AFC teams. For interconference games, CBS would broadcast them if the visiting team was from the NFC and NBC would carry them when the visitors were from the AFC. This was in line with the NFL television blackout rules of the time, meaning that every televised game of a local NFL team would be on the same channel (at the time, home games were banned from local television regardless of sell-out status, while road games are required to be aired in the teams' primary
media market A media market, broadcast market, media region, designated market area (DMA), television market area, or simply market is a region where the population can receive the same (or similar) television station, television and radio broadcasting, ra ...
s, and select neighboring markets as well, even if it is not the most popular team in the market). The two networks also divided up broadcast rights to the Super Bowl on a yearly rotation. By 1971, the
Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...
(FCC) introduced the Prime Time Access Rule, which freed local network affiliates in the top 50 markets (in practice, the entire network) to take a half-hour of prime time from the networks on Mondays through Saturdays and one full hour on Sundays. Because nearly all affiliates found production costs for the FCC's intended goal of increased public affairs programming very high and the ratings (and by association, advertising revenues) low, making it mostly unprofitable, the FCC created an exception for network-authored news and public affairs. After a six-month hiatus in late 1971, CBS would find a prime place for ''
60 Minutes ''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who distinguished it from other news programs by using a unique style o ...
'' in a portion of that displaced time, 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. ( Eastern; 5:00 to 6:00 Central Time) on Sundays, in January 1972.Madsen 15 This proved somewhat less than satisfactory, however, because in order to accommodate CBS' telecasts of late afternoon National Football League games, ''60 Minutes'' went on hiatus during the fall from 1972 to 1975 (and the summer of 1972). This took place because football telecasts were protected contractually from interruptions in the wake of the infamous "Heidi Game" incident on NBC in November 1968. Due largely to CBS' live broadcast of NFL games, as well as other sports events aired by the network that run past their scheduled end time, ''60 Minutes'' sometimes does not start until after 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time, with the program starting right after the conclusion of game coverage (however, on the West Coast, because the actual end of the live games is much earlier in the afternoon in comparison to the Eastern and Central Time Zones, ''60 Minutes'' is always able to start at its normal 7:00 p.m. Pacific start time, leaving affiliates free to broadcast local newscasts, the ''
CBS Evening News The ''CBS Evening News'' is the flagship evening News broadcasting#Television, television news program of CBS News, the news division of the CBS television network in the United States. The ''CBS Evening News'' is a daily evening broadcast featu ...
'', and other local or syndicated programming leading up to ''60 Minutes''). The program's success has also led CBS Sports to schedule events leading into ''60 Minutes'' and the rest of the network's primetime lineup, causing (again, except on the West Coast) the pre-emptions of the Sunday editions of the ''CBS Evening News'' and affiliates' local newscasts. On January 16, 1972, the
Dallas Cowboys The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. T ...
defeated the
Miami Dolphins The Miami Dolphins are a professional American football team based in the Miami metropolitan area. The Dolphins compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East division. The team ...
24–3 in Super Bowl VI in
New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...
. The CBS telecast had an estimated household viewership of 27,450,000 homes, the highest-rated single-day telecast ever at the time. Although Tulane Stadium was sold out for the game, unconditional blackout rules in the NFL prohibited the live telecast from being shown in the New Orleans market. This would be the last Super Bowl to be blacked out in the television market in which the game was played. The following year, the NFL allowed
Super Bowl VII Super Bowl VII was an American football game between the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Miami Dolphins and the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Washington Redskins to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion for ...
to be televised live in the host city (Los Angeles) when all tickets were sold. In 1973, the NFL changed its blackout policy to allow games to be broadcast in the home team's market if tickets are sold out 72 hours in advance (all Super Bowls since the second have sold out, as it is the main event on the NFL schedule, and there is high demand for Super Bowl tickets).


Labor disputes

A CBS technicians strike in
1972 Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using Solar time, ...
disrupted coverage of numerous NFL games. Some games were covered by local television crews, while some were not seen at all. The scheduled commentators for CBS did not cross the picket lines and instead, CBS had to scramble to substitute announcers. Billy Joe Patton and even the head of
CBS Sports CBS Sports is the American sports programming division of Paramount Global that is responsible for sports broadcasts carried by its broadcast network CBS and streaming service Paramount+, as well as the operator of its cable channel CBS Sports N ...
, Bill MacPhail, were among those that filled in. According to the ''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', the cut cables were discovered around noon. When CBS emergency crews (made up of supervisors) tried to bring other cables in from two trucks parked outside the stadium, a
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
cop saw a striking CBS technician trying to pry loose a cable that was hooked up to one of the trucks. At this point, the cop attempted to arrest the technician, but two of the latter's cohorts got involved, with a "scuffle" then breaking out. The first technician was arrested for criminal tampering, while the other two got hauled in on a host of other charges. CBS presumably figured it would be impossible to avoid having it happen again (although the strikers reportedly only numbered 25), so they just canceled the broadcast. Interestingly, the
San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
- Green Bay game at
Milwaukee Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...
also had nine television cables cut, but the picture was only out for eight minutes at the start of the second half. Finally, in the
Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
-
Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...
game (called by Jack Drees, George Connor, and Gil Stratton), there were no replays because they had two less cameras in use because of the strike. That Sunday, CBS was also forced to preempt ''
Face the Nation ''Face the Nation'' is a weekly news and Sunday morning talk show, morning public affairs program airing Sundays on the CBS radio and Television broadcasting, television network. Created by Frank Stanton (executive), Frank Stanton in 1954, ''Fa ...
'' because of the strike, which is notable because it came just two days before the Presidential election. Also in Week 8 of the 1972 season, the
Dallas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...
-
San Diego San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...
game was seen on a regional basis in Texas. Bill Mercer and Dick Risenhoover were the commentators for this game. No CBS network personnel worked this game, though it appears several CBS affiliates did cover the game. Meanwhile, that week's Green Bay-
Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
game was covered by about five or six CBS affiliates in
Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...
and a
Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...
CBS affiliate in the Upper Peninsula. While the game actually was done by WBAY, the channel fed the game to WISN in
Milwaukee Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...
, who then distributed the game on a closed-circuit feed to the other outlets. Bruce Roberts was not a part of the crew which was otherwise composed of Jack Whitaker and Jim Morse. The Week 11
Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...
-
Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
game was called by Jack Drees and George Connor with Andy Musser in CBS Control. CBS canceled the telecast for this the
Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
- New York game in Week 11. The
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) is a trade union, labor union that represents approximately 820,000 workers and retirees in the electricity, electrical industry in the United States, Canada, Guam, Panama, Puerto Rico, an ...
had disrupted a couple of earlier telecasts from New York and CBS did not want any more hassle. WPVI (an ABC affiliate) in
Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
purchased the rights for this game. Abruptly on the day before the game, WPVI canceled the telecast (the Eagles lost 62–10). The scheduled telecasts of two
New York Jets The New York Jets are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Jets compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East division. The team p ...
home games, Week 8 vs. Washington and week 12 vs.
New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...
, were cancelled due to the labor dispute.


Simulcasts in the San Francisco Bay Area and other experiments

On November 4,
1973 Events January * January 1 – The United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark 1973 enlargement of the European Communities, enter the European Economic Community, which later becomes the European Union. * January 14 - The 16-0 19 ...
, local San Francisco CBS affiliate KPIX (now an owned-and-operated station of the network) experimented with a "simulcast" in which the station kept switching back and forth between the network's broadcasts of a
San Francisco 49ers The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners and nicknamed the Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member ...
game (against the
Detroit Lions The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. The team plays their home game ...
) and an
Oakland Raiders The Oakland Raiders were a professional American football team based in Oakland, California, from its founding in 1960 to 1981, and again from 1995 to 2019 before Oakland Raiders relocation to Las Vegas, relocating to the Las Vegas metropolitan ...
game (against the
New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. The ...
) that were being played at the same time, with frequent cuts to studio host Barry Tompkins. The station received many complaints from viewers, however, and the experiment was not repeated. This resulted in the NFL instituting new rules for markets that had two teams, which basically state that teams televised in two markets must play their games at different times in the day or week, or one of the teams must be on the road, or the teams' games must be on different networks. (For example, an NFL schedule for a given week in markets with two team franchises might look like this:
Los Angeles Rams The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles, Greater Los Angeles area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC West, West ...
at
Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more t ...
, 1:00 p.m.;
New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. The ...
at
Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
, 1:00 p.m.;
Los Angeles Chargers The Los Angeles Chargers are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles, Greater Los Angeles area. The Chargers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC W ...
at
San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
, 4:15 p.m.; and
New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...
at
New York Jets The New York Jets are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Jets compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East division. The team p ...
, 8:00 p.m.)


''The NFL Today'' debuts

In
1975 It was also declared the ''International Women's Year'' by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe. Events January * January 1 – Watergate scandal (United States): John N. Mitchell, H. R. ...
, CBS debuted '' The NFL Today'', a pre-game show originally hosted by journalist
Brent Musburger Brent Woody Musburger (born May 26, 1939) is an American sportscaster, currently the lead broadcaster and managing editor at Vegas Stats and Information Network (VSiN). With CBS Sports from 1973 until 1990, he was the original host of their ...
and former NFL player Irv Cross, with former
Miss America Miss America is an annual competition that is open to women from the United States between the ages of 18 and 28. Originating in 1921 as a "bathing beauty revue", the contest is judged on competition segments with scoring percentages: ''Priva ...
Phyllis George Phyllis Ann George (June 25, 1949 – May 14, 2020) was an American businesswoman, actress, and sportscaster. In 1975, George was hired as a reporter and co-host of the CBS Sports pre-show ''The NFL Today'', becoming one of the first women t ...
serving as one of the reporters. Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder joined the program in
1976 Events January * January 2 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force. * January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea. * January 18 – Full diplomatic ...
but was dismissed by the network in January 1988 after making comments about racial differences among NFL players on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. George was replaced by Jayne Kennedy for the 1978 season, only for Kennedy to depart at the end of the following season. George returned in 1980 and stayed on through the 1983 season, after which she was replaced by Charlsie Cantey. In 1979, the first year that the
Sports Emmy Awards The Sports Emmy Awards, or Sports Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry. Bestowed by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), the Sports E ...
were awarded to sportscasts, ''The NFL Today'' was among the recipients.


Soundtracks, new graphics, and record Super Bowl ratings

By
1975 It was also declared the ''International Women's Year'' by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe. Events January * January 1 – Watergate scandal (United States): John N. Mitchell, H. R. ...
, CBS used several themes (technically, CBS had different opening songs and graphics per crew) to open their broadcasts, ranging from David Shire's "Manhattan Skyline" from the ''
Saturday Night Fever ''Saturday Night Fever'' is a 1977 American Dance in film, dance Drama (film and television), drama film directed by John Badham and produced by Robert Stigwood. It stars John Travolta as Tony Manero, a young Italian Americans, Italian-America ...
''
soundtrack A soundtrack is a recorded audio signal accompanying and synchronised to the images of a book, drama, motion picture, radio program, television show, television program, or video game; colloquially, a commercially released soundtrack album of m ...
to " Fly, Robin, Fly" by the Silver Convention. Around this time, Electric Light Orchestra's "Fire on High" was also used as a lead-in to the broadcast. CBS' 1976 telecast of Super Bowl X between the
Pittsburgh Steelers The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh. The Steelers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC North, North division. Founded in 1933 P ...
and Dallas Cowboys was viewed by an estimated 80 million people, the largest television audience in history at the time. CBS' telecast featured play-by-play announcer Pat Summerall (calling his first Super Bowl in that role) and color commentator Tom Brookshier. On October 12, 1976, Commissioner Pete Rozelle negotiated contracts with the three television networks to televise all NFL regular-season and postseason games, as well as selected preseason games, for four years beginning with the 1978 season. ABC was awarded yearly rights to 16 Monday night games, four prime time games, the AFC-NFC Pro Bowl, and the Hall of Fame Games. CBS received the rights to all NFC regular season and postseason games (except those in the ABC package) and to Super Bowls XIV and XVI. NBC received the rights to all AFC regular season and postseason games (except those in the ABC package) and to Super Bowls XIII and XV. Industry sources considered it the largest single television package ever negotiated. At the height of the
disco Disco is a music genre, genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the late 1960s from the United States' urban nightclub, nightlife, particularly in African Americans, African-American, Italian-Americans, Italian-American, LGBTQ ...
fad, from
1977 Events January * January 8 – 1977 Moscow bombings, Three bombs explode in Moscow within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group. * January 10 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire (no ...
to
1979 Events January * January 1 ** United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim heralds the start of the ''International Year of the Child''. Many musicians donate to the ''Music for UNICEF Concert'' fund, among them ABBA, who write the song ...
, CBS used Meco's " Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band," a disco arrangement of
John Williams John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932)Nylund, Rob (November 15, 2022)Classic Connection review, ''WBOI'' ("For the second time this year, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic honored American composer, conductor, and arranger John Williams, who w ...
's theme from ''
Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera media franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and Cultural impact of Star Wars, quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop cu ...
'', as a musical theme. Vin Scully and Alex Hawkins were assigned to call the 1977 NFC Championship Game between the
Dallas Cowboys The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. T ...
and
Minnesota Vikings The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. The Vikings compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. Founded in 1960 as ...
. Late in that game, Hawkins quipped as Roger Staubach was shown running off the field "You know, Vin, that Roger Staubach runs like a sissy." Scully responded by remarking "You know, Hawk, they tell me you didn't always wear your helmet when you played!" CBS Sports fired Hawkins the day after the game. On January 15, 1978, the
Dallas Cowboys The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. T ...
defeated the
Denver Broncos The Denver Broncos are a professional American football team based in Denver. The Broncos compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC West, West division. The team is headquartered in E ...
in
Super Bowl XII Super Bowl XII was an American football game between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion 1977 Dallas Cowboys season, Dallas Cowboys and the American Football Conference (AFC) champion 1977 Denver Broncos season, Denver Broncos to dec ...
in front of the largest audience ever to watch a sporting event. CBS scored a 47.2/67 national household rating/share, the highest-rated Super Bowl to date. This game was the first Super Bowl to be played in
prime time Prime time, or peak time, is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for television shows. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to ...
, was broadcast in the United States by CBS with play-by-play announcer
Pat Summerall George Allen "Pat" Summerall (May 10, 1930 – April 16, 2013) was an American professional American football, football player and television sportscaster who worked for CBS Sports, CBS, Fox Sports (USA), Fox, and ESPN Sunday Night Football, ESP ...
and color commentator Tom Brookshier. The game kicked off at 5:17 p.m.
Central Standard Time The North American Central Time Zone (CT) is a time zone in parts of Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, and a few Caribbean Islands, Caribbean islands. In parts of that zone (20 states in the US, three provinces or territorie ...
. Hosting the coverage was '' The NFL Today'' hosts
Brent Musburger Brent Woody Musburger (born May 26, 1939) is an American sportscaster, currently the lead broadcaster and managing editor at Vegas Stats and Information Network (VSiN). With CBS Sports from 1973 until 1990, he was the original host of their ...
; Irv Cross;
Phyllis George Phyllis Ann George (June 25, 1949 – May 14, 2020) was an American businesswoman, actress, and sportscaster. In 1975, George was hired as a reporter and co-host of the CBS Sports pre-show ''The NFL Today'', becoming one of the first women t ...
(in the last game of her first stint on ''The NFL Today'' before leaving to host the short-lived ''People'' the following season). Also contributing were Hank Stram (who had recently been fired by the
New Orleans Saints The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team based in New Orleans. The Saints compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC South, South division. Since 1975, the team ...
); Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder; Sonny Jurgensen (working on CBS Radio coverage); Gary Bender; Paul Hornung; Nick Buoniconti and Jack Whitaker. Buoniconti and Hornung served as sideline reporters; with Hornung doing postgame interviews in the Broncos' locker room; while Bender covered the trophy presentation in the Cowboy locker room. An interesting aspect was the use of what was called an Electronic Palette graphics system (created by CBS and
Ampex Ampex Data Systems Corporation is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name ''AMPEX'' is an acronym, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excell ...
) for a painting-like aspect to several visual graphics; such as the game intro, starting lineups and bumpers going into or coming out of a commercial break. CBS would also unveil what was known as the "Action Track"; showing the trail of a football that had been kicked during replays. Also, when the planned lead-in (the Phoenix Open golf tournament) was halted due to poor weather,
CBS Sports CBS Sports is the American sports programming division of Paramount Global that is responsible for sports broadcasts carried by its broadcast network CBS and streaming service Paramount+, as well as the operator of its cable channel CBS Sports N ...
president Robert Wussler (in New York) and producer Barry Frank (at the Superdome) ended up filling the time period with an impromptu look at how the game would be produced.
1978 Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of Republican People's Party, CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd ...
was Don Criqui's last season with CBS before departing for NBC; he was "traded" to NBC in exchange for network's longtime lead announcer Curt Gowdy. Criqui was, at the time prior to the trade, on the #5 team with Sonny Jurgensen and/or Nick Buoniconti. Criqui returned to CBS in
1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for Lunar water, frozen water, in soil i ...
after CBS regained NFL coverage by taking over the
American Football Conference The American Football Conference (AFC) is one of the two conferences of the National Football League (NFL), the highest level of professional American football in the United States. The AFC and its counterpart, the National Football Conference ...
package. While calling the
Eagles Eagle is the common name for the golden eagle, bald eagle, and other birds of prey in the family of the Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of Genus, genera, some of which are closely related. True eagles comprise the genus ''Aquila ( ...
-
Giants A giant is a being of human appearance, sometimes of prodigious size and strength, common in folklore. Giant(s) or The Giant(s) may also refer to: Mythology and religion *Giants (Greek mythology) * Jötunn, a Germanic term often translated as 'g ...
game at
Giants Stadium Giants Stadium (sometimes referred to as Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands) was a stadium located in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in the Meadowlands Sports Complex. The venue was open from 1976 to 2010, and primarily hosted sporting events and ...
with Jurgensen on November 19, 1978, Criqui was on hand for a
fumble A fumble in gridiron football occurs when a player who has possession and control of the ball loses it before being downed (tackled), scoring, or going out of bounds. By rule, it is any act other than passing, kicking, punting, or successful h ...
recovery by Philadelphia
cornerback A cornerback (CB) is a member of the defensive backfield or secondary in gridiron football. Cornerbacks cover Wide receiver, receivers most of the time, but also blitz and defend against such Play from scrimmage, offensive running plays as sweep ...
Herman Edwards that would become known as the " Miracle at the Meadowlands". With Giants victory all but assured, Criqui had begun to read the end credits for the game's control truck and on-field personnel shortly before the game's final play: Also in 1978, CBS experimented with three-man booths during the first half of the season. Pat Summerall and John Madden were paired together for the first time on the telecast of the
Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...
Tampa Bay Tampa Bay is a large natural harbor and shallow estuary connected to the Gulf of Mexico on the west-central coast of Florida, comprising Hillsborough Bay, McKay Bay, Old Tampa Bay, Middle Tampa Bay, and Lower Tampa Bay. The largest freshwater i ...
game on November 25,
1979 Events January * January 1 ** United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim heralds the start of the ''International Year of the Child''. Many musicians donate to the ''Music for UNICEF Concert'' fund, among them ABBA, who write the song ...
. Madden substituted for Tom Brookshier, who was unavailable to work the telecast. Madden would also join Summerall and Brookshier for the
Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...
Oakland Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major West Coast port, Oakland is ...
game in Week 7. In Week 15, Summerall worked the
Dallas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...
Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
game on Saturday with Brookshier, then the
Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
Green Bay game the next day with Sonny Jurgensen.


1980s

In
1980 Events January * January 4 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaims a United States grain embargo against the Soviet Union, grain embargo against the USSR with the support of the European Commission. * January 6 – Global Positioning Sys ...
, CBS, with a record bid of US$12 million, was awarded the national radio rights to broadcast 26 NFL regular season games, including ''
Monday Night Football ''Monday Night Football'' (often abbreviated as ''MNF'') is the branding used for broadcasts of National Football League (NFL) games that air on Monday nights. It originally ran on American Broadcasting Company, ABC from 1970 NFL season, 1970 t ...
'', and all ten postseason games through the 1983 season. Starting with the 1980 season, CBS frequently used the beginning guitar riff of
Heart The heart is a muscular Organ (biology), organ found in humans and other animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels. The heart and blood vessels together make the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrie ...
's " Crazy on You" for commercial break tosses. Television ratings for season and playoff broadcasts in 1980 were the second-best in NFL history, trailing only the combined ratings of the 1976 season. All three networks posted gains, and NBC's 15.0 rating was its best ever. CBS and ABC had also experienced their best NFL ratings since 1977, with 15.3 and 20.8 ratings, respectively. CBS Radio reported a record audience of 7 million listeners for Monday night and special games. In
1981 Events January * January 1 ** Greece enters the European Economic Community, predecessor of the European Union. ** Palau becomes a self-governing territory. * January 6 – A funeral service is held in West Germany for Nazi Grand Admiral ...
, ABC and CBS set all-time ratings highs, with ABC finishing the season with a 21.7 rating and CBS with a 17.5 rating; NBC was down slightly to 13.9. On October 18, 1981, Game 5 of the
National League Championship Series The National League Championship Series (NLCS) is a best-of-seven playoff and one of two League Championship Series comprising the penultimate round of Major League Baseball's (MLB) postseason. It is contested by the winners of the two Natio ...
between the
Los Angeles Dodgers The Los Angeles Dodgers are an American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles. The Dodgers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (baseball), National League (NL) National League West, West Div ...
and
Montreal Expos The Montreal Expos () were a Canadian professional baseball team based in Montreal. The Expos were the first Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise located outside the United States. They played in the National League (baseball), National League ...
, which was supposed to be televised on NBC that Sunday afternoon, was postponed due to snow. The cancellation of that game allowed CBS to achieve record breaking television viewership levels for a regular-season professional football broadcast. It was rated as the most watched afternoon of regular-season NFL football broadcasts on a single network in television history. In 1981, CBS introduced a new opening theme for the NFL games, a peppy, fanfare-styled theme (with a tempo reminiscent of the
disco Disco is a music genre, genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the late 1960s from the United States' urban nightclub, nightlife, particularly in African Americans, African-American, Italian-Americans, Italian-American, LGBTQ ...
style still somewhat popular at the time) that remained in use until partway through the 1986 season. The patriotic-style opening title sequence showed the Stars and Stripes of the U.S. flag morphing into the words "National Football League." That same year, CBS Sports standardized its on-screen graphics for all of its telecasts; prior to this, each director in charge for each game used a different look. For the network's coverage of Super Bowl XVI at the end of that season, CBS' theme music eventually became the theme for '' CBS Sports Saturday/Sunday''. The music itself, could be considered a hybrid of the theme used for ''The NFL Today'' at the time and the original theme for its
college basketball College basketball is basketball that is played by teams of Student athlete, student-athletes at universities and colleges. In the Higher education in the United States, United States, colleges and universities are governed by collegiate athle ...
broadcast; CBS would use this particular theme again at least for the NFC Championship Game at the end of the 1982 season.


The beginning of the Summerall-Madden era

Going into the 1981 NFL season, CBS Sports executives decided that John Madden, who had joined the network in 1979 and had worked with Frank Glieber and Gary Bender (as previously mentioned, Pat Summerall and Madden were first teamed on a November 25,
1979 Events January * January 1 ** United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim heralds the start of the ''International Year of the Child''. Many musicians donate to the ''Music for UNICEF Concert'' fund, among them ABBA, who write the song ...
broadcast of a
Minnesota Vikings The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. The Vikings compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. Founded in 1960 as ...
Tampa Bay Buccaneers The Tampa Bay Buccaneers (colloquially known as the Bucs) are a professional American football team based in Tampa, Florida. The Buccaneers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC S ...
game) in his first two years, was going to be their star NFL color commentator – however, they had trouble figuring out who was going to be his
play-by-play In Broadcasting of sports events, sports broadcasting, a sports commentator (also known as a sports announcer or sportscaster) provides a real time (media), real-time live commentary of a game or event, traditionally delivered in the present t ...
partner. At the time CBS had reshuffled their #1 team lineup as Summerall's longtime broadcast partner Tom Brookshier was moved into a play-by-play role (teamed with former
Detroit Lions The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. The team plays their home game ...
legend Wayne Walker, at the time the sports director for CBS affiliate KPIX), and it was not immediately clear if Summerall was going to keep his position or if #2 play-by-play man
Vin Scully Vincent Edward Scully (November 29, 1927 – August 2, 2022) was an American sportscaster, best known for his broadcast work in Major League Baseball. Scully was the play-by-play announcer for the Brooklyn / Los Angeles Dodgers for sixty-se ...
, whose contract was nearing expiration, was going to be promoted to take over. CBS elected to give both Summerall and Scully chances to work with Madden. They were able to pull this off rather easily; both Summerall and Scully had obligations that overlapped with football, with Summerall leading CBS’ coverage of the US Open tennis tournament and Scully being the lead voice for CBS Radio's coverage of the
Major League Baseball postseason The Major League Baseball (MLB) postseason is the annual playoffs, playoff Tournament#Knockout tournaments, elimination tournament held to determine the champion of MLB in the United States and Canada. Since 2022, the postseason for each league ...
. Thus, Madden was paired with Scully on weeks Summerall was unavailable and vice versa. The decision was made to pair Summerall with Madden, beginning a nearly two-decade long partnership. Scully stayed with CBS through 1982, joining NBC the following year to serve as their primary play-by-play announcer for
Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...
and
golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various Golf club, clubs to hit a Golf ball, ball into a series of holes on a golf course, course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standa ...
broadcasts; however, he never called NFL games for the network. Director Sandy Grossman began working alongside John Madden and Pat Summerall on CBS in 1981, and their partnership lasted 21 seasons. Madden insisted that Grossman and producer Bob Stenner watch coaches’ films of the NFL teams, which helped Grossman choose the best shots to pair with Madden's commentary. Madden credits him for being the first director to widen the camera shot to incorporate footage of outside linebackers. He created these broadcasts out of a production truck crammed with television monitors that formed a screen shot. During a
New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. The ...
-
Cincinnati Bengals The Cincinnati Bengals are a professional American football team based in Cincinnati. The Bengals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC North, North division. The team plays its h ...
game in
1991 It was the final year of the Cold War, which had begun in 1947. During the year, the Soviet Union Dissolution of the Soviet Union, collapsed, leaving Post-soviet states, fifteen sovereign republics and the Commonwealth of Independent State ...
, Stenner and Grossman made 1,100 decisions about camera angles and the like. On January 24, 1982, CBS Sports' broadcast of Super Bowl XVI – in which the
San Francisco 49ers The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners and nicknamed the Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member ...
(led by quarterback Joe Montana) defeated the
Cincinnati Bengals The Cincinnati Bengals are a professional American football team based in Cincinnati. The Bengals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC North, North division. The team plays its h ...
, 26–21 – became the highest rated Super Bowl of all time, with a 49.1 rating/73 share. Summerall and Madden called their first Super Bowl together as they went on to become one of the most popular NFL announcing teams ever. During the Super Bowl XVI telecast, the telestrator made its major network debut, which the network introduced as the "CBS Chalkboard" during their sports coverage. Madden utilized the device effectively to diagram football plays on-air to viewers. The telestrator is generally credited with popularizing the use of "telestration" during sports commentary. In 1982, the NFL signed a five-year contract with the three television networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) to televise all NFL regular season and postseason games starting with the 1982 season.


1982 NFL strike

During the 1982 season, the NFL allowed CBS to rebroadcast Super Bowl XVI during the first Sunday of the strike. CBS also rebroadcast their most recent Super Bowl ( XXI) telecast during the
1987 Events January * January 1 – Bolivia reintroduces the Boliviano currency. * January 2 – Chadian–Libyan conflict – Battle of Fada: The Military of Chad, Chadian army destroys a Libyan armoured brigade. * January 3 – Afghan leader ...
strike. Also during the 1982 strike, CBS' NCAA football contract required the network to show four Division III games; the network initially intended to show those games on Saturday afternoons, with the broadcasts being received only in markets that were interested in carrying them. However, with no NFL games to show on October 3, 1982 (on what would have been Week 5 of the NFL season) due to the strike, CBS decided to show all of its NCAA Division III games on a single Sunday afternoon in front of a mass audience. CBS originally wanted to air some Division I-A
games A game is a Structure, structured type of play (activity), play usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an Educational game, educational tool. Many games are also considered to be Work (human activity), work (such as p ...
on Sunday. However, according to ''
Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with a circulation of over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellen ...
'', fellow NCAA football rights holders ABC and WTBS refused to sign off on the idea. Both networks demanded that CBS pay more in rights fees if it showed additional games. WTBS also objected to CBS moving games from Saturday to Sunday due to fears that such games would steal viewers from the NFLPA All-Star Games that WTBS planned to air. When the red tape made showing big time college football too difficult to pull off, CBS got the idea to run Division III games on that Sunday. On January 8, 1983, CBS began their coverage of the
NFL playoffs The National Football League (NFL) playoffs is the annual single-elimination tournament held to determine the National Football League, league champion. The four-round tournament is held after the league's regular season. Since the 2020 NFL seaso ...
. As a consequence to the strike, which shortened the regular season from a 16-game schedule to only 9 games, a special 16-team playoff format (which was dubbed the " Super Bowl Tournament") was instituted. Geographical divisional standings were ignored and instead, the top eight teams from each conference were seeded 1–8 based on their regular season records. Ultimately, this resulted in the early round playoff games being regionally televised for the first and to date, only time.


Announcer shifts

Tom Brookshier was suspended for the final week of the 1983 season after commenting during a promo for an NCAA basketball game (during Week 15's
Saints In Christian belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of holiness, likeness, or closeness to God. However, the use of the term ''saint'' depends on the context and denomination. In Anglican, Oriental Orth ...
-
Eagles Eagle is the common name for the golden eagle, bald eagle, and other birds of prey in the family of the Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of Genus, genera, some of which are closely related. True eagles comprise the genus ''Aquila ( ...
game alongside Charlie Waters) between the
Louisville Cardinals The Louisville Cardinals (also known as the Cards) are the NCAA athletic teams representing the University of Louisville. The Cardinals teams play in the Atlantic Coast Conference, beginning in the 2014 season. While playing in the Big East Co ...
and North Carolina State Wolfpack that the Louisville starting five (which happened to be all black) "had a collective IQ of about 40". Brookshier eventually apologized and was reinstated for the
1984 NFL season The 1984 NFL season was the 65th regular season of the National Football League. The Colts relocated from Baltimore, Maryland, to Indianapolis, Indiana, before the season. The season ended with Super Bowl XIX when the San Francisco 49ers d ...
. For the 1985 season, the NFL showed a ratings increase on all three networks for the season, with viewership of CBS' telecasts increasing by 10%, NBC telecasts by 4%, and ABC telecasts by 16%. Beginning in Week 4 of the 1986 season, CBS adapted a theme for its game broadcast, an intense, kinetic,
synthesizer A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...
-laced theme that has affectionately been referred to as "Pots and Pans" (because of the background notes that often resembled the banging of those particular cooking objects). In
1989 1989 was a turning point in political history with the "Revolutions of 1989" which ended communism in Eastern Bloc of Europe, starting in Poland and Hungary, with experiments in power-sharing coming to a head with the opening of the Berlin W ...
, the "Pots and Pans" theme was revamped to give it a more smooth, electronic style. This theme was also known for integrating the play-by-play announcer's voice-over introduction into the theme, it integrated three voice-over segments, one for the visiting team, home team and game storyline to set the latter element into the broadcast; this practice was common with CBS Sports' themes of the 1980s.


CBS starts broadcasting in stereo

CBS' broadcast of
Super Bowl XXI Super Bowl XXI was an American football game between the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Denver Broncos and the National Football Conference (NFC) champion New York Giants to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion for ...
(at the end of the 1986 season) was the first NFL game to be broadcast in Dolby Surround sound and in
stereo Stereophonic sound, commonly shortened to stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configurat ...
. The postgame show was supposed to feature the song " One Shining Moment", but due to the extended length of the postgame interviews, CBS did not play it. The lyrics to the song, which is now played at the end of the network's
NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship The NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, branded as March Madness, or The Big Dance, is a single-elimination tournament played in the United States to determine the men's college basketball national champion of the Division I level ...
coverage, were ultimately changed from "the ball is kicked" to "the ball is tipped". CBS also debuted the theme music (composed by Lloyd Landesman) that ultimately became the theme used for CBS' college football coverage (which was also the case for the theme CBS used from
1984 Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeas ...
to 1986 after debuting it for
Super Bowl XVIII Super Bowl XVIII was an American football game played on January 22, 1984, at Tampa Stadium between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion and defending Super Bowl XVII champion 1983 Washington Redskins season, Washington Redskins and t ...
) for the 1987 season (this theme was actually loosely based on the ''Pots and Pans'' theme). At the NFL's annual meeting in
Maui Maui (; Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ) is the second largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago, at 727.2 square miles (1,883 km2). It is the List of islands of the United States by area, 17th-largest in the United States. Maui is one of ...
,
Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...
on March 15, 1987, Commissioner
Pete Rozelle Alvin Ray "Pete" Rozelle (; March 1, 1926 – December 6, 1996) was an American professional football executive. Rozelle served as the commissioner of the National Football League (NFL) for nearly thirty years, from January 1960 until his retire ...
and Broadcast Committee Chairman
Art Modell Arthur Bertram Modell (June 23, 1925 – September 6, 2012) was an American businessman, entrepreneur and National Football League (NFL) team owner. He owned the Cleveland Browns franchise for 35 years and established the Baltimore Ravens f ...
announced new three-year television contracts with ABC, CBS, and NBC, effective with the 1987 season. Beginning in 1987, CBS started broadcasting NFL games in stereo. On December 8, 1987, Cathy Barreto became the first woman to direct an NFL game at the network television level for the
Minnesota Vikings The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. The Vikings compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. Founded in 1960 as ...
Detroit Lions The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. The team plays their home game ...
telecast. On April 18, 1989, the NFL and CBS Radio jointly announced agreement extending CBS' radio broadcast rights to an annual 40-game package through the 1994 season.


The Fog Bowl and the first Turkey Leg Award

On
New Year's Eve In the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Eve refers to the evening, or commonly the entire day, of the last day of the year, 31 December, also known as Old Year's Day. In many countries, New Year's Eve is celebrated with dancing, eating, drinkin ...
, 1988, CBS was at
Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
's
Soldier Field Soldier Field is a multi-purpose stadium on the Near South Side, Chicago, Near South Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Opened in 1924 and reconstructed in 2003, the stadium has served as the home of the Chicago Bears from the National ...
for a playoff game between the
Philadelphia Eagles The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia. The Eagles compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. The team plays its ...
and
Chicago Bears The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. They are one of two remaining ...
. During the second quarter, a dense fog rolled over, cutting visibility to about 15–20 yards for the rest of the game. Television and radio announcers, and the fans in the stadium had trouble seeing what was happening on the field. A CBS helicopter providing aerial coverage for the game was forced to land. Terry Bradshaw, who was working the game with Verne Lundquist, later said he was more frustrated than at any time when he was a player. For the Thanksgiving game broadcasts on November 23, 1989, John Madden awarded the first " Turkey Leg Award", for the annual game's
most valuable player In team sports, a most valuable player (MVP) award is an honor typically bestowed upon an individual (or individuals, in the instance of a tie) whose individual performance is the greatest in an entire league, for a particular competition, or ...
. Reggie White of the
Philadelphia Eagles The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia. The Eagles compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. The team plays its ...
was the first recipient of the honor for his part in what would become known as Bounty Bowl I. The gesture was seen mostly as a humorous gimmick relating to Madden's famous multi-legged turkeys served on Thanksgiving. Since then, however, the award has gained subtle notoriety, and currently, each year an MVP has been chosen for both the CBS and Fox games. When CBS returned to the NFL in 1998, the network introduced their own award, the "All-Iron Award."


1990s

For CBS' coverage of Super Bowl XXIV at the end of the 1989 season, CBS introduced a brand new theme for its NFL broadcasts, using a considerably more traditional and standard (but still peppy and bombastic) theme than the one used the previous four seasons; the theme was used until the 1991 NFC Championship Game. On March 12, 1990, at the NFL's annual meeting in
Orlando, Florida Orlando ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Orange County, Florida, United States. The city proper had a population of 307,573 at the 2020 census, making it the fourth-most populous city in Florida behind Jacksonville, Florida, Jacksonville ...
, the league ratified new four-year television agreements with existing partners ABC, CBS and NBC, as well as newly struck cable agreements with
ESPN ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...
and TNT, to take effect with the
1990 Important events of 1990 include the Reunification of Germany and the unification of Yemen, the formal beginning of the Human Genome Project (finished in 2003), the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, the separation of Namibia from South ...
1993 seasons. The contracts involving the four networks totaled US$3.6 billion, the largest in television history. On September 9, 1990, ''The NFL Today'' overhauled its talent lineup, consisting of Greg Gumbel, Terry Bradshaw, Pat O'Brien and Lesley Visser. Gumbel and Bradshaw replaced Brent Musburger, who was fired by CBS on April 1, 1990, and Irv Cross, who was demoted to the position of game analyst alongside Tim Ryan on play-by-play. During the 1990 season, Pat Summerall was hospitalized after vomiting on a plane during a flight after a
Chicago Bears The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. They are one of two remaining ...
Washington Redskins The Washington Commanders are a professional American football team based in the Washington metropolitan area. The Commanders compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East ...
game, and was out for a considerable amount of time. While Verne Lundquist replaced Summerall on games with Madden, Jack Buck (who was at CBS during the time as the network's lead Major League Baseball announcer) was added as a regular NFL broadcaster to fill-in.


CBS broadcasts its final Super Bowl as the NFC package holder

At
Super Bowl XXVI Super Bowl XXVI was an American football game between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Washington Redskins and the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Buffalo Bills to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion f ...
, Lesley Visser became the first female sportscaster to preside over the
Vince Lombardi Trophy The Vince Lombardi Trophy, also known simply as the Lombardi Trophy or just the Lombardi, is the trophy awarded each year to the winning team of the National Football League's championship game, the Super Bowl. The trophy is named in honor of N ...
presentation ceremony. The network's telecast of Super Bowl XXVI on January 26, 1992, was seen by more than 123 million viewers nationally, second only to the 127 million that viewed Super Bowl XX. The ongoing 1990 television contract gave CBS rights to Super Bowl XXVI instead of Super Bowl XXVII, which was in the network's rotation of the champion game. The NFL swapped the years in which CBS and NBC held rights to the Super Bowl in an effort to give CBS enough lead-in programming for the upcoming
1992 Winter Olympics The 1992 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XVI Olympic Winter Games () and commonly known as Albertville '92 (Franco-Provençal, Arpitan: ''Arbèrtvile '92''), were a winter multi-sport event held from 8 to 23 February 1992 in and aroun ...
that were set to begin two weeks later. For this game, CBS debuted a new network-wide red, white and blue graphics package as well as a new theme song (composed by Frankie Vinci) for its NFL coverage that replaced the one CBS debuted for its coverage of Super Bowl XXIV two years earlier. The package lasted until the end of 1995, after which CBS discarded it in favor of an orange and yellow color scheme for its sports graphics. The new music lasted until CBS lost the NFL rights at the end of the 1993 season, but continued to be used by CBS Radio until
2002 The effects of the September 11 attacks of the previous year had a significant impact on the affairs of 2002. The war on terror was a major political focus. Without settled international law, several nations engaged in anti-terror operation ...
. Several remixed versions of the 1993 theme were used upon the return of the NFL to CBS until the end of the 2002 season, when CBS replaced its entire NFL music package with one composed by E.S. Posthumus. To compete with the halftime show (which featured a halftime show entitled "Winter Magic", a Winter Olympics-themed show starring
Gloria Estefan Gloria María Milagrosa Estefan (; ; born September 1, 1957) is an American singer, actress, and businesswoman. Estefan is an eight-time Grammy Awards, Grammy Award winner, a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, and has been named one of t ...
, Brian Boitano, and Dorothy Hamill to tie into CBS's upcoming broadcast of the Games), Fox decided to broadcast a special live episode of '' In Living Color'' and was able to attract and keep Super Bowl viewers. The live episode featured football-themed sketches (such as '' Men on Football''), a performance by Color Me Badd, and a clock counting down to the start of the third quarter. The episode was sponsored by
Frito-Lay Frito-Lay, Inc. (; ) is an American food company that manufactures, markets, and sells snack foods. It began in the early 1930s as two companies, Fritos, the Frito Company and Lay's, H.W. Lay & Company, that merged in 1961. Frito-Lay itself merg ...
, who paid $2 million to hold all national advertising time, and to help budget and promote the special; the effort included a $1 million giveaway, whose winner was announced during the broadcast. A CBS executive felt that the concept was "cute", but dismissed concerns that the ambush would have any major impact on the viewership of the Super Bowl. The special drew 20 to 25 million viewers away from the Super Bowl; Nielsen estimated that CBS lost 10 ratings points during halftime as a result of the special. It was decided that
Michael Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Michael Jackson, one of the most culturally significan ...
would perform at
halftime In several team sports, matches are played in two halves. Half-time (also written halftime or half time) is the name given to the interval between the two halves of the match. Typically, after half-time, teams swap ends of the field of play in or ...
during Super Bowl XXVII, followed by more big-name talent during subsequent Super Bowl halftimes in order to maintain Super Bowl viewership. In September
1993 The United Nations General Assembly, General Assembly of the United Nations designated 1993 as: * International Year for the World's Indigenous People The year 1993 in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands had only 364 days, since its ...
, ''The NFL Today'' celebrated its 19th season as a half-hour pre-game show. It was the highest-rated program in its time slot for 18 years, longer than any other program on television.


Losing the NFL to Fox (1994–1997)

The steady downturn in programming fortunes related to the struggling U.S. economy and a dearth of new primetime hit shows that CBS experienced during the tenure of network president Laurence Tisch (brother of New York Giants co-owner Bob Tisch) would precipitate in 1993. As the television contracts for both NFL conferences and for the
Sunday Sunday (Latin: ''dies solis'' meaning "day of the sun") is the day of the week between Saturday and Monday. Sunday is a Christian sabbath, day of rest in most Western countries and a part of the Workweek and weekend, weekend. In some Middle Ea ...
and Monday
prime time Prime time, or peak time, is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for television shows. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to ...
football packages came up for renewal, the
Fox Broadcasting Company Fox Broadcasting Company, LLC (commonly known as Fox; stylized in all caps) is an Television in the United States, American commercial broadcasting, commercial broadcast television broadcaster, television network serving as the flagship proper ...
– which made a failed attempt at acquiring the ''Monday Night Football'' package six years earlier – made an aggressive move to acquire the league television rights. CBS' initial plan was to offer the NFL $250 million per year for a long-term deal, which would have amounted to a $15 million rate cut to the league; NFL TV Committee Chairman
Art Modell Arthur Bertram Modell (June 23, 1925 – September 6, 2012) was an American businessman, entrepreneur and National Football League (NFL) team owner. He owned the Cleveland Browns franchise for 35 years and established the Baltimore Ravens f ...
and other longtime owners wanted to accept the deal, but the furious rebuttal by Dallas Cowboys owner
Jerry Jones Jerral Wayne Jones Sr. (born October 13, 1942) is an American billionaire businessman who is the owner, president, and General manager (American football), general manager of the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League (NFL). He bought t ...
and Denver Broncos owner Pat Bowlen led the committee to reject the offer and force CBS to resubmit. Knowing that it would likely need to bid considerably more than the incumbent networks to acquire a piece of the package, Fox placed a then-record bid of US$1.58 billion for the four-year contract for the broadcast rights to the National Football Conference, significantly exceeding CBS' bid for each year of the contract (Laurence Tisch had agreed to increase CBS' offer to $295 million a year, but was stunned by the almost-$400 million Fox bid and told his executives CBS would not exercise its right to match the Fox offer to keep the NFL coverage in-network). The NFC was considered the more desirable conference at the time due to its presence in most of the largest U.S. markets, such as
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
,
Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
,
Dallas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...
,
San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
, and
Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
. The NFL accepted Fox's bid on December 18, 1993, giving Fox rights to televise NFC regular season and playoff games effective with the 1994 season, as well as the exclusive U.S. television rights to Super Bowl XXXI (held in 1997) under the initial contract. This stripped CBS of NFL telecasts following the 1993 season after 38 years, resulting in CBS not broadcasting any NFL games for the next four years. The Fox network had only debuted seven years earlier and did not have an existing sports division; however, it would establish its own sports division and began building its own coverage by hiring many former CBS personalities (such as Pat Summerall, John Madden,
James Brown James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, musician, and record producer. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th-century music, he is referred to by Honorific nick ...
, Terry Bradshaw, Dick Stockton and
Matt Millen Matthew George Millen (born March 12, 1958) is an American former professional football player and executive in the National Football League (NFL). Millen played as a linebacker for 12 years for the Oakland and Los Angeles Raiders, San Franci ...
), management and production personnel. The acquisition of NFL rights by Fox made that network a major player in American television by giving it many new viewers (and affiliates) and a platform to advertise its other programs. In the meantime, CBS lost several affiliates, and ratings for its other programming languished. On May 23, 1994,
News Corporation The original incarnation of News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp. and also variously known as News Corporation Limited) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational mass media corporation founded and controlled by media mogul Ru ...
, then parent of Fox, struck an alliance with New World Communications, by now a key ownership group with several VHF affiliates of the three established major networks – most of which were CBS affiliates, almost all of which were located in NFC markets – and wary of a CBS without football. Through the deal, in which Fox purchased a 20% interest in New World, the company signed an agreement to affiliate the majority of its stations (including those that New World was in the process of acquiring from Argyle Communications and Citicasters) with Fox; twelve of New World's stations began switching their affiliations to Fox beginning in September 1994 and continuing through September 1996. CBS apparently underestimated the value of its rights with respect to its advertising revenues and to its promotional opportunities for other network programs. To this day, CBS admits that it has never fully recovered from the loss of key affiliates through the New World-Fox deal. It took a particularly severe hit in
Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...
, Detroit and
Milwaukee Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...
, as the network found itself on the verge of having to import the signals of nearby affiliates via cable and satellite after being turned down for affiliation deals by other major network stations in those markets. Ultimately, the network was relegated to UHF stations with marginal signals in certain areas within their markets (because of satellite television, the ''
NFL Sunday Ticket NFL Sunday Ticket is an out-of-market sports package that broadcasts National Football League (NFL) season (sport), regular season games unavailable on local Network affiliate, affiliates. It carries all the regional Sunday afternoon games produ ...
'' in local markets, and rules of the time, satellite subscribers were required to use antennas to pick up local affiliates). CBS purchased one of these stations,
WWJ-TV WWJ-TV (channel 62) is a television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is owned and operated by the CBS television network through its CBS News and Stations division, alongside WKBD-TV (channel 50), an affiliate of The CW. The two ...
(channel 62), only days before its longtime Detroit affiliate, WJBK (channel 2), was set to switch to Fox. The ratings impact in these three markets was significant; the former CBS affiliates were all considered to be ratings contenders, especially during the NFL season. With CBS ending up on UHF stations that had virtually no significant history as a former Fox or first-tier
independent station An independent station is a broadcast station, usually a television station, not affiliated with a larger broadcast television network, network. As such, it only broadcasts broadcast syndication, syndicated programs it has purchased; brokered pr ...
(or former Big Three affiliate for that matter), ratings for CBS programming in these markets declined significantly. In Milwaukee, for instance, WITI (channel 6)'s switch from CBS to Fox resulted in several of CBS' remaining sports properties, most notably the
Daytona 500 The Daytona 500 is a NASCAR Cup Series motor race held annually at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. It is the first of two Cup races held every year at Daytona, the second being the Coke Zero Sugar 400, and one of three ...
, not being available to cable subscribers for much of 1995 until
Weigel Broadcasting Weigel Broadcasting Co. is an American television broadcasting company based in Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, alongside its flagship station WCIU-TV (Channel 26), at 26 North Halsted Street in the Greektown, Chicago, Greektown neighborhood. It cur ...
signed carriage agreements with providers to add new CBS station WDJT-TV (channel 58).The vast resources of Fox founder
Rupert Murdoch Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian - American retired business magnate, investor, and media mogul. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of List of assets owned by News Corp, local, national, a ...
allowed that network to grow quickly, primarily to the detriment of CBS. The loss of the NFL came in part because CBS Sports suddenly went into cost-cutting mode in the wake of its money-bleeding, $1 billion deal with
Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...
(1990–1993). The network had already developed a stodgy and overly budgeted image under Laurence Tisch, who had become
chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...
of CBS in 1985. Tisch was already notorious for having made deep cuts at the network's news division and for selling off major portions of the company (such as the 1988 sale of its
Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American reco ...
division to
Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...
). When CBS lost the NFL to Fox, the "Tiffany Network" struggled to compete in the ratings with a slate of programming whose audiences skewed older than programs broadcast by the other networks, even though the network still finished ahead of Fox, whose programming at the time of the NFL deal was almost exclusively limited to primetime and children's programming. One of the few bright spots in terms of ratings and audience demographics for CBS in the Tisch era, the ''
Late Show with David Letterman ''Late Show with David Letterman'' is an American late-night talk show hosted by David Letterman on CBS, the first iteration of the ''Late Show'' franchise. The show debuted on August 30, 1993, and was produced by Letterman's production com ...
'' (which often dominated ''
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno ''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'' is an American television talk show broadcast by NBC. The show is the fourth and sixth installment of ''The Tonight Show''. Hosted by Jay Leno, it aired from May 25, 1992, to May 29, 2009, replacing ''The Ton ...
'' in its first two years) saw its ratings decline in large part due to the affiliation switches, at times even finishing third behind ''
Nightline ''Nightline'' (or ''ABC News Nightline'') is ABC News (United States), ABC News' Late night television in the United States, late-night television news program broadcast on American Broadcasting Company, ABC in the United States with a franchis ...
'' on ABC. CBS televised its last game as the rights holder of the NFC package on January 23, 1994, when the
Dallas Cowboys The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. T ...
defeated the
San Francisco 49ers The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners and nicknamed the Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member ...
in the 1993 NFC Championship Game, 38–21. After ''NFL Today'' hosts Greg Gumbel and Terry Bradshaw signed off for one last time, CBS aired a photo montage of their most memorable moments during their 38 years of covering the NFL. The montage itself was set to the instrumental tune "After the Sunrise" by Yanni.


Attempts at replacement programming

CBS made a bid on
National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...
(NHL)
rights Rights are law, legal, social, or ethics, ethical principles of freedom or Entitlement (fair division), entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal sy ...
in the wake of the loss of the NFL contract, but in a stunning blow to CBS, Fox outbid them for those rights as well. The replacement programming CBS ended up airing on Sunday afternoons in the fall of 1994 and 1995 involved mostly a package of encore made-for-TV movies under the umbrella title ''CBS Sunday Afternoon Showcase'', which were targeted towards women in an attempt to counterprogram NBC and Fox. However, they made very little headway with some
affiliates In the broadcasting industry (particularly in North America, and even more in the United States), a network affiliate or affiliated station is a local broadcaster, owned by a company other than the owner of the network, which carries some or al ...
forgoing the movie package altogether and instead airing either, local and/or religious programs, professional wrestling and syndicated television shows such as '' Highlander: The Series''; by 1996, CBS picked up additional
NASCAR The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. It is considered to be one of the top ranked motorsports organizations in ...
Winston Cup The NASCAR Cup Series is the top racing series of the NASCAR, National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR), the most prestigious stock car racing series in the United States. The series began in 1949 as the Strictly Stock Division, ...
, Busch Series and Craftsman Truck races in order to compete in some form. In 1994, CBS had a new series of
boxing Boxing is a combat sport and martial art. Taking place in a boxing ring, it involves two people – usually wearing protective equipment, such as boxing glove, protective gloves, hand wraps, and mouthguards – throwing Punch (combat), punch ...
bouts on Saturday or Sundays under the '' Eye on Sports'' banner. CBS continued airing boxing on a somewhat regular basis until 1998, by which time they had the NFL (after acquiring the
American Football Conference The American Football Conference (AFC) is one of the two conferences of the National Football League (NFL), the highest level of professional American football in the United States. The AFC and its counterpart, the National Football Conference ...
(AFC) package from NBC) and
college football College football is gridiron football that is played by teams of amateur Student athlete, student-athletes at universities and colleges. It was through collegiate competition that gridiron football American football in the United States, firs ...
back on their slate. One of the often cited reasons for the
Canadian Football League The Canadian Football League (CFL; , LCF) is a Professional gridiron football, professional Canadian football league in Canada. It comprises nine teams divided into two divisions, with four teams in the East Division (CFL), East Division and f ...
's failed American experiment, and part of the reason why the CFL fell behind the NFL in terms of quality players, was the state of the league's American television contract. The league, which had held a U.S. network television contract in the 1950s and again briefly in 1982, was then being carried on
ESPN2 ESPN2 is an American multinational pay television network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between the Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and Hearst Communications (which owns the remaining 20%). ESPN2 was initially ...
, at the time a nascent channel devoted to
extreme sports Action sports, adventure sports or extreme sports are activities perceived as involving a high degree of risk of injury or death. These activities often involve speed, height, a high level of physical exertion and highly specialized gear. Extre ...
that was not nearly as widely available as its parent network and only carried a limited number of the league's games (with ESPN itself airing some games to fill in airtime available due to the 1994 Major League Baseball strike, as well as the
Grey Cup The Grey Cup () is both the championship game of the Canadian Football League (CFL) and the trophy awarded to the victorious team playing in the namesake championship of professional Canadian football. The game is contested between the winners ...
on tape delay). It was not until after the 1995 season that the CFL, mainly through the action of its American franchises, approached CBS to see if it could get coverage. However, by the time negotiations started, the CFL had decided to fold or relocate all of its American franchises, and the negotiations with CBS accordingly fell through. It would not be until several years later that the CFL reached a television contract in the United States, on a much smaller network (
America One America One was an American television network established in 1995 by USFR Media Group through its America One Television subsidiary.
). The following year, in 1996, CBS added college football games featuring the Southeastern and Big East conferences on Saturday afternoons. It was the beginning of a rebuilding process that would eventually lead to the return of the NFL to CBS.


The NFL returns

Neal Pilson, former president of CBS Sports, said that "Four years later the negative impact was so severe that CBS went to the NFL and said, 'Name your price and we'll pay whatever to get a package' ... We lost affiliates, ratings, the male audience and a lot of sports sponsorships." In November 1996, Sean McManus (son of ABC Sports broadcast legend Jim McKay and protégé of longtime ABC Sports executive Roone Arledge) was named President of CBS Sports, and would lead CBS' efforts in re-acquiring broadcast rights to the NFL. On January 12, 1998, CBS agreed to a contract with the NFL to broadcast American Football Conference (AFC) games effective with the 1998 season (taking over the rights from NBC), paying $4 billion over eight years ($500 million per season). In the last year NBC had rights to the AFC, the
Denver Broncos The Denver Broncos are a professional American football team based in Denver. The Broncos compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC West, West division. The team is headquartered in E ...
, an original AFL team, defeated the
Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. They ar ...
in Super Bowl XXXII, which aired on NBC and ended a 13-year drought against the NFC in the Super Bowl. Around the time CBS took over the rights to the AFC saw the trend of the 1980s and 1990s reverse, in that the AFC became the dominant conference over the NFC (
1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for Lunar water, frozen water, in soil i ...
also saw the Broncos win their second consecutive
Super Bowl The Super Bowl is the annual History of the NFL championship, league championship game of the National Football League (NFL) of the United States. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966 NFL season, 1966 (with the excep ...
). The
New England Patriots The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. The Patriots compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East division. The Pa ...
dynasty in the 2000s in the only AFC-only top-ten market also contributed to the ratings surge. In fact, the primary stations for both the Broncos and Patriots are the same – KCNC-TV in Denver, and
WBZ-TV WBZ-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, serving as the market's CBS outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division alongside independent WSBK-TV (channel 38). Bo ...
in Boston, prior to the two stations switching to CBS in 1995 through the network's affiliation deal with Westinghouse – as when NBC carried the AFC ( KUSA and WHDH-TV, which is now an independent station, carried those teams' games from 1995 to 1998). In addition, the current AFC deal also saw CBS indirectly acquire rights to air most games played by the
Pittsburgh Steelers The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh. The Steelers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC North, North division. Founded in 1933 P ...
, which air locally on
KDKA-TV KDKA-TV (channel 2), branded CBS Pittsburgh, is a television station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It is owned and operated by the CBS television network through its CBS News and Stations division alongside WPKD-TV (channel 19), a ...
(a longtime CBS affiliate, which became a CBS O&O after parent company
Westinghouse Electric Corporation The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company founded in 1886 by George Westinghouse and headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was originally named "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company" and was ...
bought CBS in late 1995 and has long been one of CBS's strongest stations) and often get the highest television ratings for an NFL franchise due to the team's rabid fanbase on a national level. Coincidentally, before the AFL–NFL merger (when the Steelers went to the AFC voluntarily to balance out the number of teams between conferences), Steelers road games had aired on KDKA-TV as part of the network's deal to air NFL games, while league rules at the time mandated that home games could not be televised ''at all'' during this period, even if they did sell out tickets. After acquiring the new package, CBS Sports then named former ''NFL Today'' host Greg Gumbel, as their lead play-by-play announcer (Gumbel had moved to
NBC Sports NBC Sports is an American programming division for NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, that is responsible for sports broadcasts on their broadcast network NBC, the Cable television, cable channels NBC owns, and on Peacock (streaming service) ...
, where he worked from 1994 to 1998 after CBS lost the NFL to Fox). Phil Simms (who at the time, was at NBC as part of the lead announcing team alongside Dick Enberg and Paul Maguire) was hired as the lead color commentator. On September 6, 1998, after 1,687 days since the last broadcast of ''The NFL Today'', host Jim Nantz welcomed back viewers to CBS for its coverage of the NFL. Given the challenge of making its coverage of the AFC different from that of NBC, CBS passed over longtime NBC veterans Charlie Jones and Bob Trumpy in favor of newcomers such as Ian Eagle and
Steve Tasker Steven Jay Tasker (born April 10, 1962) is an American sports reporter and former professional football wide receiver in the National Football League (NFL). He spent the majority of his career with the Buffalo Bills but began his career with th ...
. According to CBS Sports
executive producer Executive producer (EP) is one of the top positions in the production of media. Depending on the medium, the executive producer may be concerned with management accounting or associated with legal issues (like copyrights or royalties). In film ...
Terry Ewert, "We wanted to forge our own way and go in a different direction. We wanted to make decisions on a new way of looking at things." In one stark difference from NBC, CBS used a score and clock graphic for its NFL games that was constant during the game broadcasts outside of break tosses, a la the '' FoxBox''. CBS' contribution was dubbed the '' EyeBox''. "When CBS got the NFL back (in 1997), everything picked up again," Pilson said. On November 8, 1998, CBS televised the first NFL game to be broadcast in high-definition, between the
New York Jets The New York Jets are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Jets compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East division. The team p ...
and
Buffalo Bills The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East div ...
at
Giants Stadium Giants Stadium (sometimes referred to as Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands) was a stadium located in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in the Meadowlands Sports Complex. The venue was open from 1976 to 2010, and primarily hosted sporting events and ...
. It was also the first time two
Heisman Trophy The Heisman Memorial Trophy ( ; also known simply as the Heisman) is awarded annually since 1935 to the top player in college football. It is considered the most prestigious award in the sport and is presented by the Heisman Trophy Trust followin ...
winning quarterbacks started against each other in the NFL (
Vinny Testaverde Vincent Frank Testaverde Sr. (; born November 13, 1963) is an American former professional football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 21 seasons. He played college football for the Miami Hurricanes, earning con ...
for the Jets and Doug Flutie for the Bills).


2000s

On January 28, 2001, CBS Sports, Core Digital and Princeton Video Image introduced state-of-the-art, three-dimensional replay technology called " EyeVision" for its coverage of Super Bowl XXXV in
Tampa Tampa ( ) is a city on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. Tampa's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and t ...
(at
Raymond James Stadium Raymond James Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium in Tampa, Florida, United States. It opened in 1998 and is home to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League (NFL) and the University of South Florida (USF) Bulls college football ...
). The game, CBS Sports' first Super Bowl broadcast since
1992 1992 was designated as International Space Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 – Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt replaces Javier Pérez de Cuéllar of Peru as United Nations Secretary-General. * January 6 ** The Republ ...
, drew 131.2 million viewers for the
Baltimore Ravens The Baltimore Ravens are a professional American football team based in Baltimore. The Ravens compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC North, North division. The team plays its home g ...
' win over the
New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. The ...
. As a result, Super Bowl XXXV was the most watched television program that year. Play-by-play announcer Greg Gumbel became the first African-American announcer to call a major sports championship; he was joined in the broadcast booth with Phil Simms. Both of the Ravens' Super Bowl championships to date have been on CBS; the CBS-owned station in Baltimore, WJZ-TV, had been, as an ABC affiliate, one of the strongest television stations for ''Monday Night Football'' for most of the 1980s and early 1990s, due to Baltimore's previous NFL team, the Colts' move to Indianapolis. The 2001–02 NFL playoffs marked the first time that the league scheduled prime time playoff games for the first two rounds, in an attempt to attract more viewers. Saturday wild card and divisional playoff games were moved from 12:30 and 4 p.m. Eastern Time to 4:30 and 8 p.m., respectively. As a result, the league abandoned its practice of scheduling playoff games held mainly in colder, northern regions for daylight hours only; any stadium, regardless of evening January temperatures, could host prime time playoff games.


Jim Nantz and Greg Gumbel swap roles

In
2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and Its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 60 ...
, Jim Nantz and Greg Gumbel swapped roles on CBS's NFL broadcasts. Nantz took Gumbel's place as the lead play-by-play announcer while Gumbel took Nantz's spot as the host of ''The NFL Today''. Following the 2005 season, CBS discontinued the use of sideline reporters in its regular season NFL coverage until
2014 The year 2014 was marked by the surge of the Western African Ebola epidemic, West African Ebola epidemic, which began in 2013, becoming the List of Ebola outbreaks, most widespread outbreak of the Ebola, Ebola virus in human history, resul ...
. In Week 1, the
Tennessee Titans The Tennessee Titans are a professional American football team based in Nashville, Tennessee. The Titans compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC South, South division. They play the ...
-
Miami Dolphins The Miami Dolphins are a professional American football team based in the Miami metropolitan area. The Dolphins compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East division. The team ...
game was moved a day earlier due to the threat of Hurricane Ivan. As per Dick Enberg's US Open duties, he was filled in on play-by-play by Dan Dierdorf, while Todd Blackledge provided color commentary. Two weeks later, the Dolphins' game against the
Pittsburgh Steelers The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh. The Steelers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC North, North division. Founded in 1933 P ...
was pushed to 8:30 p.m.
Eastern Time The Eastern Time Zone (ET) is a time zone encompassing part or all of 23 states in the eastern part of the United States, parts of eastern Canada, and the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico. * Eastern Standard Time (EST) is five hours behi ...
because of Hurricane Jeanne. The game aired on the CBS and UPN affiliates in both Pittsburgh and Miami. In the 2005 season, the game between the
Kansas City Chiefs The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chiefs compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) West division. Established in 1959 ...
and the Miami Doplhins was moved two days earlier from its originally scheduled date due to the threat of Hurricane Wilma. The game aired in the local markets of the two teams. The next group of broadcast contracts, which began with the 2006–07 season, resulted in a size-able increase in total rights fees. Both Fox and CBS renewed their Sunday afternoon broadcast packages through 2011, in both cases with modest increases. On February 6, 2006, CBS Sports announced the return of James Brown, who left CBS eleven years earlier to become studio host of ''
Fox NFL Sunday ''Fox NFL Sunday'' is an American sports television program broadcast on the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox television network. The show debuted on September 4, 1994, and serves as the pre-game show for the network's National Football League (NFL ...
'', to the network as the host of ''The NFL Today''. Greg Gumbel moved back to play-by-play, teaming with Dan Dierdorf. CBS decided to not feature sideline reports for the 2006 regular season. However, the network did use Lesley Visser, Sam Ryan, Solomon Wilcots and Steve Tasker to report from the sidelines and around the stadium for its telecast of Super Bowl XLI. In the 2006 season, CBS' coverage of the 2006 AFC Championship Game between the
New England Patriots The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. The Patriots compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East division. The Pa ...
and the
Indianapolis Colts The Indianapolis Colts are a professional American football team based in Indianapolis. The Colts compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC South, South division. Since the 2008 India ...
earned a 28.1 rating, which topped the season premiere of ''
American Idol ''American Idol'' is an American Music competition, singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle (company), Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It a ...
'' on Fox. Its Super Bowl XLI broadcast drew the third largest television audience in history, finishing behind only its broadcast of the '' M*A*S*H'' finale (" Goodbye, Farewell and Amen") in 1983 and NBC's broadcast of
Super Bowl XXX Super Bowl XXX was an American football game between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Dallas Cowboys and the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Pittsburgh Steelers to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion fo ...
(
Dallas Cowboys The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. T ...
and
Pittsburgh Steelers The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh. The Steelers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC North, North division. Founded in 1933 P ...
) from 1996. Super Bowl XLI was the second most watched Super Bowl broadcast of all time, averaging 93.1 million viewers.


HDTV coverage

As late as 2006, CBS aired only three of its NFL games in high-definition each week, the same number of games it had aired for the past few seasons. The other networks that held rights to broadcast NFL games – NBC,
NFL Network NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League NTP and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and N ...
and
ESPN ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...
– broadcast all of their games in high definition, and Fox broadcast up to six in HD. Because of this, some fans accused CBS of being "cheap." Beginning with the 2007 season, CBS began airing five of the Sunday games in high definition television on doubleheader weeks, and six on singleheader weeks. Former CBS Sports Executive Vice President Tony Petitti (who left CBS in April 2008 to become the head of the newly established
MLB Network MLB Network is an American television sports channel dedicated to baseball. It is primarily owned by Major League Baseball, with TNT Sports (United States), TNT Sports, Comcast's NBC Sports Group, Charter Communications, and Cox Communications h ...
) claimed the network would probably air all of its NFL games in high definition by
2009 2009 was designated as the International Year of Astronomy by the United Nations to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first known astronomical studies with a telescope and the publication of Astronomia Nova by Joha ...
. When asked about the move, Petitti commented that CBS was focused on building a new studio for ''The NFL Today'' pre-game show. However, another CBS executive had previously indicated that, because CBS was an "early adopter" with its first HD game in
1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for Lunar water, frozen water, in soil i ...
, it is already "at capacity" and would have to replace newly purchased equipment in its network center with even more expensive equipment. However, CBS did carry its entire slate of games in 2009 in HD, though a few non-essential camera positions for some games (mainly used only in analysis situations) continued to be shot in 4:3 SD. Beginning with the 2013 season, CBS Sports switched to a 16:9 full
widescreen Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratio (image), aspect ratios (relationship of image width to height) used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ...
presentation, which began requiring the use of the #10 Active Format Description tag to present the games in a letterboxed
widescreen Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratio (image), aspect ratios (relationship of image width to height) used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ...
format for viewers watching on
cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...
through 4:3 television sets.


CBS introduces the "CBS Eye-lert"

For the 2007 season, CBS announced the advent of "CBS Eye-lert", a service that allows viewers to be notified via e-mail and text message when the start time of a program will be delayed. The "Eye-lert" was eventually extended on-air to a banner graphic that appears during the prime time lineup within sports broadcasts and segments of delayed regularly scheduled evening programs. During Week 7 of the 2008 season, a power failure at Buffalo's Ralph Wilson Stadium caused problems leading to the regular broadcast team of Greg Gumbel and Dan Dierdorf being unable to call portions of the game (the
Buffalo Bills The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East div ...
vs. the
San Diego Chargers The San Diego Chargers were a professional American football team in the National Football League (NFL). The Chargers played in San Diego, California from 1961 until 2016, before relocating back to the Greater Los Angeles area, where the franch ...
). Video was still available, and so James Brown called portions of the game from the studio, with the rest of the ''NFL Today'' team providing color commentary.


2010s

With an average U.S. audience of 106.5 million viewers,
Super Bowl XLIV Super Bowl XLIV was an American football game between the National Football Conference (NFC) champions New Orleans Saints and the American Football Conference (AFC) champions Indianapolis Colts to decide the National Football League (NFL) c ...
on CBS was, at the time, the most-watched Super Bowl telecast in the championship game's history as well as the most-watched program of any kind in American television history, beating the record previously set 27 years earlier by the final episode of ''M*A*S*H'', which was watched by 105.97 million viewers. The game telecast drew an overnight national
Nielsen rating Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the #Nielsen TV ...
of 46.4 with a 68 share, the highest for a Super Bowl since Super Bowl XX in 1986; and drew a 56.3 rating in
New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...
and a 54.2 rating in
Indianapolis Indianapolis ( ), colloquially known as Indy, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Indiana, most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana, Marion ...
, first and fourth respectively among local markets. Super Bowl XLV surpassed the record a year later and was itself topped by Super Bowl XLVI in 2012. On November 28,
2010 The year saw a multitude of natural and environmental disasters such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the 2010 Chile earthquake. The 2009 swine flu pandemic, swine flu pandemic which began the previous year ...
, CBS broadcast its 5,000th NFL game. On December 14, 2011, the NFL, along with Fox, NBC and CBS, announced a nine-year extension of the league's rights deal with all three networks to the end of the 2022 season. The extended contract includes the continued rotation of the Super Bowl yearly among the three networks, meaning CBS would air Super Bowls XLVII (2013), Super Bowl 50, 50 (2016), Super Bowl LIII, LIII (2019), and Super Bowl LV, LV (2021). The late-afternoon regional games held on December 1, 2013 NFL season, 2013 (2013 Denver Broncos season, Denver Broncos–2013 Kansas City Chiefs season, Kansas City Chiefs and 2013 Cincinnati Bengals season, Cincinnati Bengals–2013 San Diego Chargers season, San Diego Chargers) drew a 16.7 household rating, a 29 share, and 28.106 million viewers from 4:25 to 7:47 p.m. Eastern Time. On November 24, 2014, CBS presented a special Monday night game between the 2014 New York Jets season, New York Jets and the 2014 Buffalo Bills season, Buffalo Bills from Ford Field (which was moved from Ralph Wilson Stadium due to November 13–21, 2014 North American winter storm, a major lake effect snowstorm that affected Western New York). In 2017, Beth Mowins became the first woman ever to call a football game for CBS, when she called the 2017 Cleveland Browns season, Cleveland Browns-2017 Indianapolis Colts season, Indianapolis Colts game with Jay Feely in Week 3. On the first Sunday of the 2019 NFL season, NFL's 100th season, a power outage affecting a
CBS Sports CBS Sports is the American sports programming division of Paramount Global that is responsible for sports broadcasts carried by its broadcast network CBS and streaming service Paramount+, as well as the operator of its cable channel CBS Sports N ...
production truck stationed at EverBank Stadium, TIAA Bank Field in Jacksonville, Florida for the 2019 Kansas City Chiefs season, Kansas City Chiefs-2019 Jacksonville Jaguars season, Jacksonville Jaguars regional broadcast forces the network to switch viewers, including those in Kansas City and Jacksonville, to other games. The initial explanation by ''NFL on CBS'' host
James Brown James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, musician, and record producer. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th-century music, he is referred to by Honorific nick ...
was that the network was cutting away from the game for more competitive action (at the time of the outage the result was not in doubt, with the Chiefs leading 37-19 and eventually winning 40–26), but later revealed to be technical difficulties.


CBS broadcasts via a secondary audio program and the internet

For the 2012 NFL season, CBS began providing Spanish play-by-play commentary of all game broadcasts via a Second audio program, secondary audio program feed. Also in 2012, to further prevent issues surrounding late games from delaying prime-time programming on the east coast (also influenced by other recent changes slowing the pace of games, such as video reviews and the kickoff for late games being moved from 4:15 to 4:25 p.m. Eastern Time), CBS began to move the start of its prime-time schedule in the eastern and central times zones to 7:30 p.m./6:30 p.m. on weeks that the network carries a 4:25 p.m. game. Super Bowl XLVII was broadcast for free on the Streaming television, internet on the host network's website, in this case CBSSports.com. CBS charged an average of $4 million for a 30-second commercial during the game, the highest rate for any Super Bowl. According to Nielsen Holdings, Nielsen, Super Bowl XLVII was watched by an estimated average total audience of 108.69 million U.S. viewers, with a record 164.1 million tuning into at least six minutes of the game.


2014–2017: Thursday night games

In January 2014, reports surfaced that the NFL was shopping a selection of up to eight games from its ''Thursday Night Football'' package to other broadcasters, including the league's existing broadcast partners, along with Turner Sports. While the league was seeking either a cable or broadcast outlet, they were strongly considering the latter. On February 5, 2014, it was announced that CBS would air eight, early-season Thursday night games during the 2014 NFL season in simulcast with NFL Network, with the remainder airing on NFL Network exclusively. CBS's team of Jim Nantz and Phil Simms handled commentary for all of the games, and CBS Sports produced all of the games in the package, including those on NFL Network, which would be produced in the manner of CBS telecasts. Tracy Wolfson would be the sideline reporter. Wolfson joined the NFL team on a permanent basis after working Southeastern Conference#Football, SEC games for College Football on CBS Sports, CBS since 2004 NCAA Division I-A football season, 2004. She was replaced by Allie LaForce in that capacity. As a part of the contract, CBS was also allowed to broadcast a Saturday game in Week 16 for the first time since 2005. On January 18, 2015, the NFL announced that CBS and the NFL Network would again partner, with the same broadcast schedule, during the 2015 NFL season. The contract is again only for one year, while CBS's Sunday contract is 12 years long. The contract was renewed for another two years for the 2016 and 2017 seasons, with the network load reduced to five games each year. CBS also partnered with Yahoo Sports, Yahoo! Sports during the 2015 season, with Yahoo live streaming a CBS-produced game around the globe. The game was not available on CBS except in the local markets of the teams (2015 Jacksonville Jaguars season, Jacksonville and 2015 Buffalo Bills season, Buffalo). CBS again produced Yahoo! Sports's webcast of the 2017 Jacksonville Jaguars season, Jaguars' 2017 game against the 2017 Baltimore Ravens season, Baltimore Ravens. On January 31, 2018, the NFL announced that Fox won the rights to televise ''Thursday Night Football'' for the next five seasons; this came after CBS requested a lower rights fee to compensate for declining viewership.


Tony Romo joins CBS

Following his retirement from the NFL, Tony Romo was hired by
CBS Sports CBS Sports is the American sports programming division of Paramount Global that is responsible for sports broadcasts carried by its broadcast network CBS and streaming service Paramount+, as well as the operator of its cable channel CBS Sports N ...
to serve as the lead Color commentator, color analyst for the network's NFL telecasts, working in the booth alongside play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz, replacing Phil Simms, who was moved to the studio for '' The NFL Today''. While there was no controversy regarding Romo deciding to retire and move on to broadcasting, some critics questioned Romo being immediately hired for the number one position ahead of broadcasting veterans Dan Fouts, Trent Green, or Rich Gannon, all of whom served in the number 2–4 positions respectively for CBS, with Fouts having once been the color commentator on ''
Monday Night Football ''Monday Night Football'' (often abbreviated as ''MNF'') is the branding used for broadcasts of National Football League (NFL) games that air on Monday nights. It originally ran on American Broadcasting Company, ABC from 1970 NFL season, 1970 t ...
''. While some critics had speculated that Romo was handed the top position so quickly because America's Team, he wore a star on his helmet, other reports cited CBS having grown tired of Simms in the role, which was a mutual feeling shared by Simms himself. Nonetheless, none of the ex-players and coaches in a lead position on other networks at the time of Romo's hiring (Troy Aikman, Cris Collinsworth, and Jon Gruden) started their broadcasting career in the lead position. Simms jokingly asked Romo "How does that seat feel?" during Week 1 of ''The NFL Today''. Once the 2017 NFL season got underway, Romo received critical praise for his work as a recent ex-player, most notably for his ability to predict offensive plays and read defensive formations from the booth, and "adding an enthusiasm that had been lacking with Simms". Romo and Nantz received further acclaim for their broadcasting of the 2018–19 NFL playoffs#AFC: New England Patriots 37, Kansas City Chiefs 31 (OT), 2018 AFC Championship Game between the 2018 Kansas City Chiefs season, Kansas City Chiefs and 2018 New England Patriots season, New England Patriots, as "Nantz continually set Romo up to make his predictions and analysis prior to the snap", and some suggested that Chiefs head coach "Andy Reid could have used Romo on his defensive staff, because the former quarterback knew just about every play the Patriots were going to run down the stretch". According to ''The Guardian'', the "beauty of Romo's analysis is that it feels like he's in on the fun with you." Romo and Nantz called Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta. CBS's coverage of Super Bowl LIII utilized a total of 115 cameras, including 8K resolution cameras (for the first time in a U.S. network sports telecast) in the end zones, as well as field-level and "up close" augmented reality graphics (with the latter generated from a wireless, handheld camera). Initial overnight Nielsen Media Research, Nielsen Ratings measured a 44.9 rating for the game, down 5% from the previous year and the lowest rating for a Super Bowl since Super Bowl XLIII ten years prior. 98.2 million viewers were measured, the fewest since Super Bowl XLII. Jemele Hill of ''The Atlantic'' attributed the low ratings "to the game being the lowest-scoring Super Bowl ever, moderate national interest in the 2018 Los Angeles Rams season, Rams, the lingering bad taste from the huge blown call in the 2018 NFC Championship Game, NFC Championship Game, and Patriots fatigue".


2020s

CBS also gained rights to air a second Wild Card game, as the NFL expanded its postseason from 12 to 14 teams (7 in each conference). As part of gaining the rights to air the second game, which was played on January 10 at 4:40 ET, CBS's sister network Nickelodeon also aired a NFL on Nickelodeon, self-produced broadcast of the game, in an effort to promote a younger audience. CBS will air two Wild Card games and one AFC Divisional game in odd-numbered years, two Wild Card games and both AFC Divisional games in even-numbered years, the AFC Championship Game (in the afternoon in even-numbered years, primetime in odd-numbered years), and the Super Bowl every three years. Following Cam Newton's positive COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, COVID-19 test, the 2020 New England Patriots season, New England Patriots-2020 Kansas City Chiefs season, Kansas City Chiefs game, originally scheduled for Sunday afternoon, was postponed to Monday, October 5 at 7:05 p.m. ET to be broadcast nationally. This was CBS's first Monday night telecast since November 24, 2014. The Kansas City Chiefs won 26–10. In October 2020, Amazon (company), Amazon acquired rights to simulcast one of CBS's NFC Wild Card games on Amazon Prime Video, as part of its digital rights to the league (expanding upon its involvement with ''Thursday Night Football''). On October 13, 2020, due to multiple positive COVID-19 tests in the Tennessee Titans organization, the 2020 Tennessee Titans season, Titans-2020 Buffalo Bills season, Buffalo Bills game was moved to Tuesday, which was the seventh Tuesday NFL game in history. The Titans ultimately won the game 42–16. Super Bowl LV was televised by CBS. Although NBC was to air this game under the current rotation, they traded with CBS for Super Bowl LVI, which falls during the 2022 Winter Olympics and is the first to be scheduled during an ongoing Olympic Games (this also upholds the untold Gentlemen's agreement, gentleman's agreement between the NFL's broadcasters to not counterprogram the Super Bowl, as NBC also holds the U.S. broadcast rights to the Olympics). CBS used 120 cameras in total, including 10 4K cameras, two 8K cameras, a crane camera, a Trolley Cam running parallel with the field, and two Sony Venice cameras that were used to produce cinematic and "3D-like" scenes reminiscent of video games. Production was decentralized due to COVID-19 protocols, with some production duties being conducted remotely from the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City and at individual employees' homes. CBS officially introduced a rebranding of the
CBS Sports CBS Sports is the American sports programming division of Paramount Global that is responsible for sports broadcasts carried by its broadcast network CBS and streaming service Paramount+, as well as the operator of its cable channel CBS Sports N ...
division during Super Bowl LV, as part of a larger brand unification process between the CBS network's main divisions. On March 18, 2021, the NFL along with CBS, Fox, NBC, and
ESPN ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...
announced an eleven-year extension of the league's rights deal with all four networks until the end of the 2033 season. The extended contract includes the continued rotation of the Super Bowl yearly among the four networks, meaning that CBS will air Super Bowls Super Bowl LVIII, LVIII (2024), Super Bowl LXII, LXII (2028), and 66 (number), LXVI (2032). The broadcast teams for two games late in the 2021 NFL season, 2021 season were impacted by COVID-19 protocols: Tom McCarthy (sportscaster), Tom McCarthy filled in for Jim Nantz alongside Tony Romo for the Week 18 game between the 2021 Carolina Panthers season, Carolina Panthers and 2021 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Trent Green filled in for Charles Davis (defensive back), Charles Davis on color commentary alongside Ian Eagle for a 2021–22 NFL playoffs#AFC: Cincinnati Bengals 19, Tennessee Titans 16, divisional playoff game featuring the 2021 Cincinnati Bengals season, Cincinnati Bengals and 2021 Tennessee Titans season, Tennessee Titans. On January 30, 2022, during the ''Verizon Halftime Report'', all of the commentators were inaudible due to a technical fault involving an unannounced Walker Hayes halftime performance at Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium. The speakers were unnoticeably placed in front of the CBS set. The 2022 season marked Greg Gumbel's final season working NFL games on CBS, although he remained with the network as a studio host for NCAA March Madness (TV program), NCAA March Madness coverage.


Usage of Nickelodeon

CBS elected to capitalize on its 2019 merger of CBS and Viacom, re-merger with Viacom by incorporating its popular kids' channel Nickelodeon into NFL coverage. The idea for Nickelodeon to televise an NFL game was that of
CBS Sports CBS Sports is the American sports programming division of Paramount Global that is responsible for sports broadcasts carried by its broadcast network CBS and streaming service Paramount+, as well as the operator of its cable channel CBS Sports N ...
' chairman Sean McManus. During negotiations, McManus brought the idea up to the league, which was looking to reach younger and diverse audiences. While the network has aired sports-related programming in the past (such as its athletics game show ''Nickelodeon Guts'', and its Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, Kids' Choice Sports awards), this marked the first live sporting event to ever be televised by Nickelodeon. McManus explained that the production planned to "respect the integrity of the game", but that there would be features "to make it look and feel very, very different than a CBS broadcast, which it should. I think it's really going to be fun." Coordinating producer Shawn Robbins described the broadcast as being a "Nick-ified", "co-viewing" experience for parents and children, and that it would still "look somewhat the same", as they did not want to "mess with your football and put stuff on if that's going to take away from the viewing experience." Noah Eagle (son of CBS Sports commentator Ian Eagle, and radio play-by-play voice of the Los Angeles Clippers) served as play-by-play announcer, alongside former wide receiver and ''Good Morning Football'' and '' The NFL Today'' analyst Nate Burleson. They were also joined by two Nickelodeon actors, Gabrielle Nevaeh Green and Lex Lumpkin (who are both cast members of Nickelodeon's comedy series ''All That''), as analyst and field reporter respectively. Emphasis was placed on educating viewers of the rules of football; this included appearances by Sheldon Cooper (as played by Iain Armitage on CBS sitcom ''Young Sheldon'') to explain penalties. Robbins told ''The New York Times'' that Green was accidentally sent an 800-page package of game notes that was intended for Tony Romo. The 2020 New Orleans Saints season, New Orleans Saints-2020 Chicago Bears season, Chicago Bears playoff game on January 10, 2021, as it was broadcast on CBS, was called by their lead commentary team of Jim Nantz (play-by-play) and Tony Romo (color). Due to COVID-19 protocols (which had also caused him to miss the previous week's game), Romo worked remotely. Nantz, as well as reporters Jay Feely and Tracy Wolfson, were present on-site in New Orleans. In the lead-up to Super Bowl LV, Nickelodeon aired further programming previewing the game, while CBS added classic Nick elements such as green slime to segments of its Super Bowl broadcast. Following the success of the 2021 Wild Card game, the NFL extended its partnership with Nickelodeon by allowing them rights to another Wild Card game in January 2022, the 2021 San Francisco 49ers season, San Francisco 49ers against the 2021 Dallas Cowboys season, Dallas Cowboys. Eagle, Burleson, and Green returned to call the game, plus a weekly highlights show hosted by Burleson with ''Tyler Perry's Young Dylan'' star Dylan Gilmer, who replaced Lumpkin as sideline reporter. Nickelodeon then televised a regular season NFL on Christmas Day, Christmas Day game in 2022, between the 2022 Denver Broncos season, Denver Broncos and the injury-plagued defending Super Bowl champion 2022 Los Angeles Rams season, Los Angeles Rams. For the 2023 season, Nickelodeon aired another Christmas Day game, the 2023 Las Vegas Raiders season, Las Vegas Raiders and the 2023 Kansas City Chiefs season, Kansas City Chiefs. In addition, Nickelodeon aired Super Bowl LVIII, marking the first time that the Super Bowl had an alternate telecast on another network.


Market coverage and television policies

As with NFL on Fox, Fox's coverage, the network's stations are divided into different groups based on the most popular or closest team to that market or, if that does not apply, based on the allure of a particular game. Each football game is rated as an "A", "B" or "C" game, with "A" games likely being televised nationally and "C" games airing only in the home television markets of the two participating teams. Significantly more behind-the-scenes resources are dedicated to "A" game coverage. Under NFL broadcasting rules, CBS must televise all of its assigned games in the home market of the visiting team (and, if it is sold out, the city where the game is being played) in its entirety. If a game is non-competitive, the network may switch all but the two home markets to another game. If a game is delayed or interrupted by severe weather, the network may switch to another game until the resumption of play. If the home team's game is NFL television blackout policies, blacked out, the local CBS affiliate is not allowed to replace it with another game. From 1970 to 1993, CBS exclusively covered games involving only NFC opponents and interconference games in which the road team was a member of the NFC. From 1998 to 2013, CBS exclusively broadcast AFC-only games and interconference games featuring an AFC road team. Since the 2014 season, while AFC-only games still form the bulk of CBS's coverage, the league reserves the right to move games between CBS and Fox regardless of conference affiliation to maximize viewership – for example, high-profile NFC matchups that would be relegated to regional coverage because they occur during Fox's singleheader week can be moved to CBS' afternoon window.


Local preseason television coverage

Since CBS re-obtained the NFL broadcast rights in 1998, a number of the network's local stations have televised preseason football games, mostly including the network's graphics and production that viewers would normally see during regular season national/regional broadcasts. A number of NFL teams and their broadcasting departments have teamed up with CBS Sports to produce games; , these teams include the
New York Jets The New York Jets are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Jets compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East division. The team p ...
(WCBS-TV in New York City),
Los Angeles Chargers The Los Angeles Chargers are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles, Greater Los Angeles area. The Chargers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC W ...
(KCBS-TV in Los Angeles) and
Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. They ar ...
(WGBA-TV in Green Bay and co-flagship WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee; since former CBS O&O WFRV-TV in Green Bay lost the local rights to the preseason games, Packers coverage on WGBA and WTMJ currently uses an in-house graphics package, although the telecasts continue to use a CBS technical and announcing team). However, there are some that used a few, but not all, elements of the ''NFL on CBS'' production presentations, and they are mostly in-house productions between the teams and their individual flagship station; these include the Pittsburgh Steelers (KDKA-TV), Miami Dolphins (WFOR-TV), San Francisco 49ers (KPIX and KOVR in Sacramento), Dallas Cowboys (KTVT), Cincinnati Bengals (WKRC-TV),
New England Patriots The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. The Patriots compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East division. The Pa ...
(
WBZ-TV WBZ-TV (channel 4) is a television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, serving as the market's CBS outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division alongside independent WSBK-TV (channel 38). Bo ...
), Atlanta Falcons (WANF) and the Jacksonville Jaguars (WJAX-TV). CBS O&O
WWJ-TV WWJ-TV (channel 62) is a television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is owned and operated by the CBS television network through its CBS News and Stations division, alongside WKBD-TV (channel 50), an affiliate of The CW. The two ...
in Detroit was the
Detroit Lions The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. The team plays their home game ...
' flagship station from 2008 to 2010 and used most of their graphics and music. In addition to WWJ, of the stations mentioned, WCBS; KCBS; KDKA; WFOR; KTVT; KPIX; KOVR and WBZ are all currently owned by CBS News and Stations, CBS Television Stations.


On-air staff


Current


Play-by-play

* Andrew Catalon: play-by-play (2013–present) * Spero Dedes: play-by-play (2010–present) * Ian Eagle: play-by-play (1998–present) * Kevin Harlan: play-by-play (1998–present) * Chris Lewis (sportscaster), Chris Lewis: play-by-play (2023–present) select assignments * Tom McCarthy (sportscaster), Tom McCarthy: play-by-play (2014–present) * Beth Mowins: play-by-play (2017–present) select assignments * Jim Nantz: studio host (1998–2003); play-by-play (1988–1993); lead play-by-play (2004–present) * Noah Eagle: NFL on Nickelodeon, Nickelodeon play-by-play (2021–present)


Studio hosts

*
James Brown James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, musician, and record producer. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th-century music, he is referred to by Honorific nick ...
: studio host (2006–present) * Nate Burleson: studio analyst (2017–present); fill-in studio host (2020–present); NFL on Nickelodeon, Nickelodeon analyst (2021–present)


Studio analysts

* Bill Cowher: studio analyst (2007–present) * Jonathan Jones: insider (2022–present) * Nate Burleson: studio analyst (2017–present); fill-in studio host (2020–present); NFL on Nickelodeon, Nickelodeon analyst (2021–present) * Matt Ryan (American football), Matt Ryan: analyst (2023); studio analyst (2024–present) * J. J. Watt: studio analyst (2023–present)


Game analysts

* Adam Archuleta: analyst (2014–present) * Tiki Barber: analyst (2019–present) * Nate Burleson: NFL on Nickelodeon, Nickelodeon analyst (2021–present) * Charles Davis (defensive back), Charles Davis: analyst (2020–present) * Jay Feely: special teams analyst- NFL Playoffs (2015–2024), regular analyst (2017–2024) * Trent Green: analyst (2014–present) * Jason McCourty: analyst (2023–present) select assignments * Tony Romo: lead analyst (2017–present) * Ross Tucker: analyst (2023–present) select assignments * Gene Steratore: rules analyst (2018–present)


Sideline reporters

* Evan Washburn: sideline reporter (2014–present), #2 sideline reporter (2015–present) * Tracy Wolfson: lead sideline reporter (2013–present), feature reporter (2013–present) * Melanie Collins: sideline reporter (2017–present), #3 sideline reporter (2018–present) * Amanda Balionis: sideline reporter (2018–present) * Tiffany Blackmon: sideline reporter (2023–present) * AJ Ross: sideline reporter (2018–present), #4 sideline reporter and Sideline Reporter for the NFL Playoffs on Westwood One * “Young” Dylan Gilmer: NFL on Nickelodeon, Nickelodeon reporter (2022–present) * Amanda Guerra: sideline reporter (2023–present) select assignments * Aditi Kinkhabwala: sideline reporter and Sideline reporter for the NFL Playoffs on Westward One(2022–present) * Dylan Schefter: NFL on Nickelodeon, Nickelodeon sideline reporter (2022–present) * Justin Walters: sideline reporter (2023–present) select assignments


2024 broadcaster pairings

Source: # Jim Nantz/Tony Romo/Tracy Wolfson # Ian Eagle/Charles Davis (defensive back), Charles Davis/Evan Washburn # Kevin Harlan/Trent Green/Melanie Collins # Andrew Catalon/Tiki Barber/Jason McCourty (weeks 1 and 3)/AJ Ross # Spero Dedes/Adam Archuleta/Aditi Kinkhabwala # Tom McCarthy (sportscaster), Tom McCarthy/Jay Feely/Ross Tucker (week 1)/Tiffany Blackmon (week 1) or Amanda Balionis (week 2) # Chris Lewis (sportscaster), Chris Lewis/Jason McCourty/Amanda Guerra


Digital on-screen graphics


1992–1993

CBS Sports debuted on-screen graphics (as opposed to simple text) for its event telecasts in
1991 It was the final year of the Cold War, which had begun in 1947. During the year, the Soviet Union Dissolution of the Soviet Union, collapsed, leaving Post-soviet states, fifteen sovereign republics and the Commonwealth of Independent State ...
. These graphics used a small score graphic that contained the score and game clock, which was removed during plays. The graphics were gray, beveled edged rectangles, with logos shown in a beveled edged square.


1998–2000

From
1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for Lunar water, frozen water, in soil i ...
to 2000 NFL season, 2000, the scoring bug had a half-capsule shape where the score was displayed in white text on a blue background (that contained the CBS, CBS eye), below the quarter and time in black text on a white background. The down and distance would pop out from the bottom of the bug in a white box when necessary; it would spin around to show the number of timeouts left. The standard graphics were blue, and individual team graphics were colored according to the team. When a team scores, there were no special effects; it changes instantaneously.


2001

Starting in Super Bowl XXXV, the bug took on a more rectangular shape, with the score and quarter/time positions flipped. The scores were now displayed in white text against a gold background, and the quarter and time beneath them in a white text on a blue background. The down and distance and ball location popped out in two separate boxes underneath the main bug. New this season, the bug is situated on the left or right of the screen depending on which team has possession. The team-specific colors for graphics were dropped, and would not be used again by CBS until 2013.


2002–2005

In
2002 The effects of the September 11 attacks of the previous year had a significant impact on the affairs of 2002. The war on terror was a major political focus. Without settled international law, several nations engaged in anti-terror operation ...
, a new bug with more of a horizontal orientation was introduced. The ''CBS Sports'' logo that previously adorned the top of the bug was replaced with the CBS "eye" logo in blue and white. The bug was divided into two rectangles, the left one housing the time and quarter and the right the teams and scores, all in white text on blue. As in years past, the down and distance were contained in a pop-out box, also in the blue and white scheme. In 2002, the graphics package itself remained the same as in 2000 and 2001. However, the look was updated in 2003 to more closely match the design of the score box. In 2004 and 2005, the top two games each week were presented in high definition. These HD broadcasts used a score box optimized for the 16:9 frame, the first time that a U.S. network had used graphics optimized for high definition. In Week 3 of the 2004 season, CBS unveiled a constant scoring update bar on the bottom of the screen (the first of its kind). This was initially called "Game Trax", and complimented "Stat Trax", unveiled the year before which was the first system to show player statistics updates popping out of the score display after a play (now standard on all networks).


2006–2008

The 2006 NFL season, 2006 season introduced a new graphics package for ''The NFL on CBS'', including a new logo (which also formed the base of College Football on CBS Sports, SEC college football and College Basketball on CBS Sports, NCAA college basketball logos) and new ''NFL Today'' studio set, as part of a network-wide overhaul of the graphics package. The digital on-screen graphics were also changed, with red and a light shade of blue introduced from the new logo. A more complex scoring bug included the new ''NFL on CBS'' logo and six circle segments stacked in columns of two emanating from the logo. The first two featured the quarter and time, the next two the team abbreviations (all in white text on the darker blue) and the last two each team's respective scores in black text on a white background. The entire bug was trimmed in the red and lighter blue; the down and distance pop-out changed to a half-ellipse shape. When a team scores a touchdown, the columns that emanate from the logo collapse into the logo. The logo then quickly spins around to show the scoring team's logo, a full bar the shape of the combined boxes quickly protruding showing the word "TOUCHDOWN", with the bug sparkling. After about three or four seconds of this graphic showing, the aforementioned animation takes place once more, this time with the bug returning to normal. In all instances of points scored, the changed score flashes a few times to indicate a change in score, with a touchdown score changing after the "TOUCHDOWN" graphic is shown. Notably, this score box was not optimized for high definition as the previous package was, even on HD games.


2009–2012

In
2009 2009 was designated as the International Year of Astronomy by the United Nations to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first known astronomical studies with a telescope and the publication of Astronomia Nova by Joha ...
, the score bug was changed to a top-screen banner, although the graphics package used from 2006 NFL season, 2006 remained the same. This bug featured, horizontally left-to-right, the CBS "eye" logo, the down and distance against a white background, each team's logo, initials and points, and then the quarter and remaining time. When the down and distance was not displayed, that and the CBS "eye" logo were replaced by a blue and red "NFL on CBS" logo. When there was a penalty, the word "FLAG" replaced the down and distance on a yellow background, with the penalty description dropping down from below the team's initials; when there is an official review, the down and distance would be replaced by "OFFICIAL REVIEW" on a red background. For challenges, a drop-down below the teams initials with a dark red background shows with the word "CHALLENGE." The play clock would flash red when it hit the 5-second mark and stays red until the play clock is reset. When a team scored a touchdown, the entire bar would change, displaying the scoring team's logo on the left and the team's main color as the background, with the word "TOUCHDOWN" with the letter spacing widening for a few moments before returning to normal. After such, the team's score will be highlighted their color, and the previous score will be replaced by the new score (this also happens when the team's PAT or 2-point conversion is ruled to be good). After this occurs, stats of players involved immediately appear in the bottom of the banner. A small white indicator showed on the top of the bar, on top of whatever team currently had possession of the ball. At times, at the bottom of the bar, various player statistics (such as quarterback ratings), game stats (such as drive summaries), and situational issues in the game (such as amount of timeouts remaining), would pop open for a few moments whenever it is needed. For Week 3 of the 2009 season, the possession indicator was changed to a small dot next to the team's logo due to the addition of timeout indicators across the top. Beginning with the 2011 NCAA Division I FBS football season, NCAA football season in September 2011, college football broadcasts on College Football on CBS Sports, CBS and the CBS Sports Network began using a scoring bug mirroring this one. CBS Sports Network's United Football League (2009–2012), United Football League coverage in 2012 also used the same graphics package.


2013–2015

CBS debuted a new graphics package starting with CBS's coverage of Super Bowl XLVII; the package was used for all CBS game telecasts beginning with the 2013 season. Originally optimized for a 4:3 display, the elements are now optimized for the 16:9 format as a result of CBS's incorporation of the AFD #10 broadcast tag. The lower third graphics adopt the column layout for player info graphics used by several other sports broadcasters. The portion containing the player's name is stacked on the left, with the team's primary color in the background of the name panel. Other statistics are shown on a gray background on panels to the right. The score banner is gray with team abbreviations listed over their primary color and next to their logo. For Sunday game broadcasts, the ''NFL on CBS'' logo is placed on the left; the "NFL" portion disappears and is replaced by the down and distance, "Flag", or "Official Review". Also for the Sunday broadcasts, challenges and statistics drop down from the bar. The only scoring play which used an animation is a touchdown, which involves the team logo and the word "Touchdown" appearing in place of the banner. Timeout indicators are located above the team abbreviations for Sunday broadcasts, and a possession indicator is located to the right of the abbreviation. Since CBS began airing the evening games in 2014, ''Thursday Night Football'' games use a package with the usual CBS curved-edged graphics, however incorporating a generic "TNF" logo in lower thirds instead of the CBS logo because Thursday broadcasts also air on the NFL Network. A "TNF" text logo is also used in the border of full screen graphics where the "NFL on CBS" text is usually seen. The score bar is located on the bottom of the screen instead of the top, with the "NFL on CBS" text replaced by a "CBS TNF" mark, and the "TNF" portion disappearing to show down and distance. The usual play clock location is instead home to an NFL Network logo, with the play clock moved next to the game clock for Thursdays only. Any information that drops down from the bar on Sundays instead pops up from the bar on the Thursday broadcasts, with timeout indicators flipped to the bottom. For the London NFL International Series game between the 2015 Buffalo Bills season, Buffalo Bills and 2015 Jacksonville Jaguars season, Jacksonville Jaguars live-streamed on Yahoo in 2015, all silver "CBS" marks in the graphics package were replaced by purple "Yahoo" logos and the NFL logo. The game used the top-screen version of the scoring banner. The UK broadcast on Sky Sports featured no Yahoo or CBS logos, leaving only the NFL logo, while the BBC Two broadcast was a Clean feed (television), clean feed using the regular BBC Sport graphics package used for Rugby football, Rugby coverage.


2016–2020

During Super Bowl 50, CBS unveiled a major rebranding of the CBS Sports division, including a new logo and on-air graphics—moving its scoreboard to the bottom of the screen, and using outlined, rectangular graphics with a steel blue base and use of gradients. Beginning with Week 6 of the 2017 NFL season, the records for each team were displayed to the right of the timeout indicators. The records are not displayed during the playoffs and the first week of the regular season. Beginning with Super Bowl LIII and the subsequent 2019 season, the scoreboard received minor updates to elements such as its play clock (with its red background beginning to drain with five seconds remaining). A significantly different graphics scheme was used for ''Thursday Night Football'' games. The NFL on Nickelodeon, Nickelodeon simulcasts on January 10, 2021, and January 16, 2022, featured various Nickelodeon-themed effects and features designed to appeal to the youth audience, with this template used as its basis. Various augmented reality graphics were employed, including the 1st & Ten (graphics system), first down line being rendered in orange with animated green "slime" rather in yellow, as well as the end zone pylons becoming virtual "slime cannons" on touchdowns (dubbed the "Slime Zone") (both in keeping with Nickelodeon's long tradition of You Can't Do That on Television, green slime), the net behind the uprights on field goal attempts being rendered as the face of SpongeBob SquarePants (character), SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star, and replays edited to include "Snapchat-like" filters such as hats, googly eyes, and Nickelodeon characters. During the halftime show, 3D animated recreations of highlights with ''Minecraft''-like "Blockie" players were featured, generated using data from the NFL Next Gen Stats system. During Week 13 of the 2020 NFL season, 2020 season, the game between the 2020 Green Bay Packers season, Green Bay Packers and 2020 Philadelphia Eagles season, Philadelphia Eagles was used as a rehearsal to test the effects and workflows for the Nickelodeon broadcast. Eight dedicated cameras were used to augment those being shared with the main CBS production, in order to provide camera angles optimized for the augmented reality effects (such as a wider end zone view for the "slime cannon").


2021–present

CBS Sports unveiled a new graphics package during Super Bowl LV, as part of a wider rebranding of the CBS Sports division in support of CBS's new corporate identity and "deconstructed eye" branding. The insert graphics maintain a similar overall structure to the designs used since 2016, except being Flat design, flat and black with no borders, and extensive use of the new CBS corporate font. During the 2021 season, CBS introduced a new feature known as "RomoVision" in collaboration with Genius Sports and NFL Next Gen Stats, which displays a top-down overlay of the field with players represented by X and O symbols during selected replays to assist in visualizing plays. In 2022, the feature received a George Wensel Technical Achievement Award at the
Sports Emmy Awards The Sports Emmy Awards, or Sports Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry. Bestowed by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), the Sports E ...
. During Super Bowl LVIII, CBS debuted an updated scoreboard, returning to a gradient-shaded appearance with revised typography, although the remainder of the graphics continued to follow the designs used since 2021. Nickelodeon opted to keep the previous scoreboard design, which was first used in the 2022 Nickmas game, in order to match those in the main broadcast, on its alternate broadcast, this time being based on ''SpongeBob SquarePants''.


Music

The theme song for ''NFL on CBS'' is "Posthumus Zone" by E.S. Posthumus. The theme song made its debut on the broadcast during the 2003 NFL season.


Nielsen ratings

The Sunday afternoon, October 14, 2007, game between the 2007 New England Patriots season, New England Patriots and 2007 Dallas Cowboys season, Dallas Cowboys on CBS, was viewed by 29.1 million people, making it the most-watched NFL Sunday game since the 1996 Dallas Cowboys season, Dallas Cowboys–1996 San Francisco 49ers season, San Francisco 49ers game on November 10, 1996 NFL season, 1996 on Fox NFL, Fox (29.7 million viewers), according to Nielsen Media Research data. The game was also the most-watched television program for the week of October 8–14, drawing nine million viewers more than the CBS crime drama ''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'' (19.8 million viewers), and was the most-watched program of the season. The November 4, 2007, broadcast of a game between the 2007 New England Patriots season, New England Patriots and 2007 Indianapolis Colts season, Indianapolis Colts drew a 20.1 rating and 33.8 million viewers for CBS. During the 17-week 2008 season (September 4 – December 28, 2008), CBS' regular-season game telecasts were watched by an estimated cumulative audience of 150.9 million viewers, 14% higher than NBC's 132.4 million viewers, 3% higher than Fox's 146.9 million viewers, and 52% higher than
ESPN ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...
's 99.4 million. The cumulative audience is based on the total number of viewers (persons 2+) who watched at least six minutes of NFL game coverage since the start of the 2008 regular season. For the 2009 season, the network's regular-season telecasts averaged 19.509 million viewers (counting only seven airings during the season by Nielsen). For the first thirteen weeks of the 2013 season, the CBS game telecasts averaged 26.5 million viewers. The February 11, 2024 broadcast of Super Bowl LVIII on CBS and NFL on Nickelodeon, Nickelodeon became the List of most-watched television broadcasts#United States, most watched telecast in U.S. television history, averaging a combined 123.7 million viewers. The record was since shattered by next year's Super Bowl LIX televised on Fox and streamed on Tubi, averaging an approximate 127.7 million viewers.


See also

* '' The NFL Today'' * ''NFL on Fox'' * ''NBC Sunday Night Football'' * ''Monday Night Football, ESPN Monday Night Football'' * ''Thursday Night Football'' * ''College Football on CBS Sports, College Football/SEC/Big Ten on CBS''


References


External links


Official website

The NFL Today - CBSSports.com
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Nfl On Cbs, The 1956 American television series debuts 1994 American television series endings 1998 American television series debuts 1950s American sports television series 1960s American sports television series 1970s American sports television series 1980s American sports television series 1990s American sports television series 2000s American sports television series 2010s American sports television series 2020s American sports television series Black-and-white American television shows CBS original programming CBS Sports NFL broadcasts, CBS American television series revived after cancellation