It’s entirely possible you don’t know much about Sean McManus. But the son of Jim McKay (yes, that one) was kind enough to give me an hour out of his ridiculously busy schedule. McManus is in charge of CBS News and CBS Sports. The only other person to hold two such positions at once? Roone Arlidge. The interview was so long, I figured it would better suit the reader to break it up between basketball and non-basketball talk. We’ll go with the latter first. Below, McManus talks tons about his father, his hatred of losing and his fear of not having a CBS camera in sight the day bin Laden is caught.
How often do you get to communicate with big-time sports figures who live so close to you? Namely, Chris Russo, Mike Lupica, George Bodenheimer and NBC Sports president Ken Schanzer.
SM: Frequently. … The world of sports television is a very small, almost incestuous group. We are competitors, but, first and foremost, we are friends. It’s ironic that the president of the three East-Coast-based sports divisions all live within four miles of each other. It’s a small, tight-knit group.
Talk about your childhood, if you could. It certainly couldn’t have been normal.
SM: I had an unusually blessed childhood. Since I was 7 years old, I traveled with my dad to a lot of sporting events, including great ones like the Indianapolis 500, the U.S. Open golf championship, the Kentucky Derby … and some not-so-great events like the World Barrel Jumping Championships, the World Synchronized Swimming Championships, in Albany, N.Y., and my favorite, the World Dogsled Championships in Wannalancit, New Hampshire. So I had a great introduction and grew up among the men and women who creating sports television at ABC, who were the standard for sports television excellence. By the time I was 12 years old, I knew what I wanted to do in life. My mother wasn’t so sure — she wanted me to be a doctor or a stockbroker — but I knew I wanted to be a producer of sports television.
When I was a junior at Duke University, I was very fortunate, through a family connection, to get an internship at Solomon Brothers, which was the Wall Street firm at that time. I was the only person in the program who wasn’t going to go to business school and who wasn’t set on a career on Wall Street. At the end of the summer I told my parents, ‘I could probably make more money on Wall Street, but I think I would out of my mind. I want to go into sports television. They said, ‘great.’ So by the time I graduated I had a production assistant job lined up at ABC sports, which is the lowest rung on the ladder. Having said that, I’d probably been working in sports television since age 15. Sweeping out trailers, doing statistics, doing graphics, getting a Coke for the producer. By the time I graduated, I had a very good foundation in sports television because of my dad.
So why was he referred to as Jim McKay?
SM: My dad’s legal name was James McManus. He came to New York in the 1950s and there was a semi news/entertainment show being developed called “The Real McKay.” My dad’s agent though he would be good for that, and they said, ‘You got the job, the only thing is, ‘The Real McKay’ is a play on words of the real McCoy. They want you to change your name to Jim McKay. And my father said, ‘If I can have the show, I’ll change my name to Schwartz.’ So the name stuck, and he never changed it. Growing up, half my friends thought my parents were divorced because my name was different, and the other half didn’t believe my father was Jim McKay. Eventually, when they saw him at soccer games, football games or baseball games, which he could go to — he only worked weekends; I went to school in Fairfield — all the mothers would drive us to away games. It was usually four or five mothers and my father. It was a really, really wonderful way to grow up.
I’m sure you’ve been asked this question a lot, but I’ve never gotten the chance to ask it to you. Can you tell us something about your father that isn’t common public knowledge, and he wouldn’t mind you sharing? Something that would do well for his legacy …
SM: Well, I think his legacy speaks for itself, but the one thing that people who knew my father, especially on a personal basis, understood that he was the exact same person doing grocery shopping in Westport, Connecticut, as he was as the Olympic anchor. He never changed. He was always a shy man, never wanted to be the center of attention and never quite fully grasped that he was a celebrity. We used to go to dinner in Westport at Allen’s Clam House or Maneroo and he was always surprised and very complimented that people thought he was an important celebrity, which he was. But he never lost his grounding. In some ways he has tried, and has, passed that along to me. I’m very cognizant of the position that I hold, and fortunately it’s a great and important position, but I’ve never lost sight of the fact that, first and foremost, I’m a father and a husband and a son more so than the president of CBS News and CBS Sports.
You have a very interesting position. You’ve reached this elite level in producing and television, but you’re not only compared to your dad, but also Roone Arlidge. How well did you know Roone and what similarities do you feel you have with him?
SM: Well, I knew him more from seeing him with my dad. Most of my experience with him is watching him produce the Olympic Games in Munich, Montreal and other places. I would watch how he took five or six events going on simultaneously and coordinate it exactly how what events should be seen at what time, what the main storyline of the evening was. Nobody in the history of television ever had a mind like Roone, whereby he could just synthesize what was important in an event, whether that be news or sports, he could translate that onto the television screen. Secondarily, he had phenomenal eye for talent, whether it was Jim McKay, Howard Cosell, Keith Jackson, Frank Gifford, Peter Jennings or Ted Koppell or David Brinkley, he understood what made great on-air talent.
Listen, I’m fortunate that I’m the only person in this industry to have the two jobs that Roone held simultaneously— president of a network sports and news division—having said that, I would never put myself in the same category as Roone Arlidge. I mean, he came along at a time when he was literally, almost on a weekly basis, inventing television. He was inventing Monday Night Football, inventing Wide World of Sports, bringing in the slow-motion camera. … He was a pioneer and a legend. I’m just trying to run CBS Sports and CBS News in the best way I possibly can and keep it moving forward. I would compare myself to Roone in title only.
What kind of man are you? How would you describe yourself?
SM: I am proud of what the people who have worked for me have been able to accomplish, quite frankly. I give credit to the Jim Nantzes, James Browns and Dick Enbergs and all the producers and directors on the sports side, and I give credit to the Bob, Katie Courics, Steve Crofts and the Scott Pelleys, who work at CBS News. I am fiercely, fiercely competitive. I absolutely hate to lose. I hate the fact that every morning when I wake up that we are still in third place in the evening and morning newscasts. That eats away at me. I haven’t been able to solve that problem yet, but we’re making progress.
I love both my jobs. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t realize how incredibly lucky I am to not only have one of the best jobs of the world, but two. If you went to someone in journalism school and said, ‘What is your ultimate goal?” They would probably say one of two things: be a correspondent on ’60 Minutes’ or be president of CBS News. The same thing for anyone in sports television: run a major sports network. … I love to work hard, and I think my father instilled in me a certain perspective, that there are things more important than the television ratings or how you covered a particular sporting event. That would be your integrity.
My father, if nothing else, he was a man completely and totally of honesty and integrity, and that’s still very important to me. At the end, when they’re giving my memorial, if I had a choice between saying, ‘He did his job honestly and with integrity,’ or ‘He was the world’s greatest president of CBS Sports and CBS News,’ it would be a no-brainer, I would take the former, not the latter. … There’s enormous pressure in jobs, particularly in the news portion of it because its’ a relentless, 24-hours-a-day, unpredictable job. But I do wake up almost every morning looking forward to going to work. I don’t think a lot of people in this world can say that. The variety of my job is just astounding.
Let’s hit the way-back machine. You left Duke, got the job at ABC right away, but what about when you in your mid 20’s? Think about then and now: has it gone beyond expectations? I’d assume it has to — there’s no way you could imagine you could get to this point, right?
SM: I had two goals: to be an executive producer of a sports network or a president of a sports network. I was leaning, in my early career, toward executive producer because I started out in production. I was going along the production route before I got hired by NBC. And there was a clearer route with more advancement in the management side of programming, rights acquisition and business affairs than there was in production. So I started to more aggressively pursue the management side of. I would always say I set my goals high. My goal when I became a production assistant was to someday have my job. The avenue, the fact I went to NBC, which was being run by two men who were trained by Roone Arlidge — Jeff Mason and Donald Meyer—who I knew very well as producers at ABC, they thought I would be, at age 27, a good candidate for vice president of programming. I wasn’t quite sure I was ready for that job, so for the first year I was scared a lot of the time, which was really good for me, because nobody works harder or tries harder than someone who is scared. I was in situations giving presentations and in negotiations where I was probably too young, but it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. They took a chance on me, and it worked out quite well. … I give those two gentlemen, and Arthur Watson [former NBC Sports president] a lot of credit for whatever I’ve been able to accomplish.
The first big negotiation I went into was a track and field federation. The president of the IAAF [International Athletics Association Foundation]], when we walked in, I was heading our delegation, he said, ‘Where’s the man who’s going to negotiate on the behalf of NBC?” The person I was with said, ‘Mr. McManus is going to do that.’ And he could not comprehend, because at that time I looked a lot younger than 27 or 28. I dealt with that a lot. I dealt, at least at first, negotiations with the wisdom and the longevity was not on my side, but my youthful exuberance made up for that.
What are your day-to-day duties? Take us through an average day.
SM: Well, my average day starts at about 6:30, reading, or at least glancing through six different newspapers. I try to get as much of that done before 7 o’clock, then I watch all three morning shows. … I compare what we’re doing to what they’re doing. How each individual piece is done. I send e-mails, which probably drives most people at CBS News crazy, both positive and negative. At 9 o’clock, when that’s done, the rest of my day is filled with meetings in sports and news, and my favorite day is what I call a 50-50 day. That’s where roughly half is consumed by news and half by sports. I will go from a 10 o’clock editorial meeting, which we have every morning, where I will talk with different broadcasts about what’s going to be on the evening news, what our priorities are, where correspondents are going to go.
I sometimes go from that to planning on the Super Bowl, which we’re going to be doing next February, or the Final Four. During the basketball tournament, it’s very exhilarating. I’m in the studio at 11:30, coordinating all the switching back and forth of 16 individual games on that day. Then, the first wave is over at 4 o’clock and I try to get caught up on what’s happening with the evening news. The news is over at 7, and I rush upstairs because we’re back on with basketball at 7 o’clock. That is the quintessential and best example of the worlds colliding. They are very separate. … I’m in my News office 95 percent of the time because I have to be situated in one place, so the Sports people will come over and meet with me in my News office.
I can be accused of micromanaging everything from a script of a piece in the Evening News to helping oversee our election coverage. I like to be involved in every aspect of what goes on the screen. … During the Final Four, I’m in the truck, same with The Masters, because I love television production. That’s still my love. I have a lot of discussions with the correspondents and anchors on the News side and the on-air talent on the Sports side, whether that be calling Jim Nantz … or talk to Bob Schieffer and Katie Couric all the time, so we can bounce ideas around. In the end, you’re judged, primarily and by what goes on the television screen and how many people watch it. I’ve learned you can’t control how many people watch it, but you can control what goes on the screen. What is seen on the screen is the number one priority in both of my jobs. And the jobs are very similar. There are basically three or four things: really good storytelling, producing really big events, whether that be an election, a Super Bowl or a convention of the Final Four, nurturing and development on-air talent.
I was very discouraged when I found out when I got my News job on the first day that you can’t buy the rights to a convention or an election. In sports, you can buy the Super Bowl, you can buy the Final Four. No one is going to produce The Masters on Saturday or Sunday than CBS Sports. Everyone is producing the conventions: three networks, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, CNBC, Fox News, so there’s no exclusivity at all. Plus, sports are completely predictable, in terms of when they are. I know the Final Four is going to tip off 2010: 9:21. I can’t tell you when the next cargo ship is going to hijacked by pirates off Somalia, I can’t tell you when the next school shooting is going to happen or when the next plane is going to crash or the next hero is going to be created, like Sully. But sports is a predictable lifestyle. News is relentless. Every time my phone rings at 10:30 at night, I’m afraid something has happened bad. I’m always on edge. My biggest nightmare is they’re going to find Bin Laden in a cave, and everyone’s going to be there with a camera except CBS News. … Those are the things you worry about. How are you going to react to a crisis?
Talk about the everyday challenge of saying, “OK, here’s a story that would be 18 inches in a newspaper, but we can only give it 45 seconds on the air.”
SM: It’s very frustrating. We only have 22 minutes of programming in a half-hour newscast. It is very frustrating. I think that, in a very capsulated way, we try to say what’s happening in the world and we try to give perspective by giving features. We don’t do a purely hard news show where we say, ‘Here’s what’s happening in Afghanistan. Here’s what’s happening in Pakistan, the financial crisis.’ We try to give some perspective and some compelling story that reflect on what’s happening in America. I’m envious of the cable networks. I’m envious of Anderson Cooper, who gets at least an hour to do it every single night. It’s not an ideal situation.
Having said that, there are about 25 million people on any given night who are watching one of the three broadcast. On CNN, their highest-rated show has about a million viewers. So, the impact we are having in network television, people say the network news is irrelevant, for 25 million people a night, they’re not irrelevant — that’s a huge audience. … If you’re a real news junkie, you’re not going to get your daily fix of news on CBS, NBC or ABC, you’re going to go to the other cable shows or the Internet. So we’re trying carve out and maintain a position in a world that is completely and vastly different than it was five years ago, much less 25 years ago, when there was no CNN or Internet. … But one of the things I’m proudest of, if you watch any three of the network news broadcasts … I’m really proud of the resources we put into it. We don’t do it for profit, we do it because we think it’s an important service to provide to our affiliates and our viewers. We could probably make more money by putting another game show in there, but that’s not what the television network is all about, and it’s not what the people who run these networks and these companies should be doing.
What’s on your plate right now? You have to be organized and well-lined up.
SM: Most of our sports deals are done for the next three years. I would say the Super Bowl is a huge priority. We’ve already had two planning meetings, even though the event is in February. We’re trying figure out pregame coverage. And with dealing with the financial pressures of both division is a major ongoing operation. We’re trying to figure out how we can cover the news on a worldwide basis as efficiently as we can, knowing revenues aren’t growing in the advertising world. Those are ongoing budgetary concerns. … We’re constantly trying to figure out how to make the Early Show and the evening news more competitive. On a daily basis, we spend an awful lot of time thinking about.
Has the recession affected CBS in terms of layoffs?
SM: We’ve had some layoffs, yeah. I think we’ve had less than other companies because I think we were run more efficiently, going back a number of years, when we made some different cuts that other networks weren’t making. But listen, ad revenues are down for everybody. They’re down drastically. It’s a difficult time to work at a company and work on a broadcast that is advertiser-dependent. Having said that, I think we’ve made our adjustments, our coverage hasn’t been sacrificed at all. … I think we’re doing a really, really good job nationally, but having to think harder about doing it efficiently.
Technology is changing all the time, and that’s saving us a lot of money. But when people say, ‘You’ve had some layoffs,’ what I say to them is, ‘Watch our newscast for a week and tell me what story you think we should’ve done a better ob covering if we had more money or more people.’ I usually don’t get the call back. I use the example of when war broke out in the Middle East in the summer of ’06. We had eight correspondents and anchors in the Middle East, Israel, Gaza and Lebanon within 24 hours. We could’ve done it really well with four, but we said we’re going to cover this and spend whatever it takes to cover it. The way the world is right now, you don’t have to have a fully-staffed bureau in Jerusalem or Tel-Aviv. No one, including my boss, has ever said, ‘Don’t spend the money.’ Whether that’s the Virginia Tech shootings or the Minneapolis bridge collapse. I’m not shy at all about the money we spend to cover stories well.
What do you still have a desire to do? Aside from moving up in the ratings and all. How much longer do expect to hold the two titles you have.
SM: I’m not exactly as young as you are, young man. I’m 54 years old right now. [Laughs]
Well, some guys can chug for awhile. You look at John Madden. So what’s left to accomplish?
SM: As far as the length of my tenure, right now, my feeling is I’ll do it as long as my boss lets me do it. I don’t have a timetable. I certainly want to do another election cycle. The 2008 election was as an exhilarating experience as you can have in television coverage. CBS News has been in third place in the morning for over 50 years. They’ve been in third place at 6:30 for 13 or 14 years. I’m not naïve enough to think that can be changed in a couple of years, but I think I’d like to show more progress in the area in the morning and evening, where people’s habits sometimes take decades to change.
People are sick of hearing me say this, but it took Tom Brokaw 13 years to become number one. And after six months, people were saying, ‘Oh, Katie’s not going to make it, is she?’ Well, before we decided whether something is successful or not, let’s give it some time. I think the quality of that broadcast is as good as any in television. The work she’s doing is as hard as anyone’s doing. I would like, and I’m not bullish enough to say this now, I would like people to unquestionably have in their mind, when they think of news division, CBS News to be number one in every category in perception and numbers. I can’t say that right now but would like to be able to say that at some point in my life. I hope I have time to do that and I hope my boss gives me time to do that. In sports, I’d like to keep the events we have, keep our reputation and keep doing the job we do at the great events we do.
If [CBS president] Les Moonves said, ‘All right, you can only do one or the other now: News or Sports.’ Would you choose News because it’s more of a challenge, since you haven’t done it as long, or would you stick with Sports, your first love.
SM: Well, that would be a little like saying you have to choose one of our children, because I love them both. Sports, from a pure enjoyment standpoint, is more fun to do. It’s not life and death. There’s an enormous sense of responsibility in news coverage, more so than in sports. If you miss a play, or don’t have the perfect replay, it’s not great, but that’s OK. If you miscall a state, as the networks did with Florida in 2000, where if you make a mistake in coverage or report something inaccurately, that really is a major, major problem. There is much more pressure in news. It is much more unpredictable. A greater burden of responsibility. If I were going to choose where I think I could make the most difference and affect what’s happening in America, I’d probably have to say I’d choose the News. If I were choosing purely on what I enjoy more doing, I’d probably rather be at the Super Bowl, the Masters or the Final Four than in the control room helping coordinate coverage of a major news event. But it would be really tough to choose, and I’d ask my boss for another year of doing both before I made my decision. [Smiles]
