Part two of CHJ’s interview with Sean McManus focuses more on the college basketball and general sports-covering realm of his job. He opens up about Billy Packer, the choice of Clark Kellogg and his worries about ESPN’s ambition to perhaps steal some early-round games away from CBS. (You can read part one here.)
During the tournament, are you the one who is making the decisions and saying, for instance, ‘OK, let’s give this region this game now.’ Or are you observing?
SM: In the end, yes, I am making those decisions. There are three or four people who make those decisions on the fly, too, and you make hundreds of them on Thursday and Friday to start the tournament. It is the single most complicated day in sports television. … You’re constantly switching back and forth to eight separate parts of the country. The country is divided into four different regions of four different games, and within each of those regions there’s always a region that always sees a “constant” game. But you’re always moving around and everybody second-guesses what you do because no matter what decision you make, you’re going to annoy some people. It could be a 40-point blowout with Duke beating Richmond, and you could take that game out of a market and put in a buzzer-beater, and Duke fans will be, “What is CBS doing?” We’ve got it down to a good science; we actually made a couple of mistakes this year.
My brother was going nuts in the Wisconsin-Florida State game …
SM: We had a technical error — I’m not going to make excuses — and we also learned another valuable lesson, which is, when in doubt, leave the game of local interest in the market. In Buffalo, Siena finally made it to the tournament, they’re in a great game with Ohio State, other games were going on and we’re switching back and forth and the folks in Siena, Buffalo and Albany were going nuts. You try to be aggressive, you try to serve the basketball fan, but the local fan probably takes priority. So next year, we’ll do less switching in the areas of intense interest.
But for all the switches we do, you always hear from the guys and ladies who aren’t happy, but there is a situation where a game goes to 15 points, so you switch to another game that might be a two-point game. Then, all of the sudden, the game you’ve switched from goes down to seven points. Then you switch back and someone says, ‘Well, they missed the entire run.’ Well we missed the entire run, because we couldn’t predict it. And the people who got the two-point game are a little annoyed because you’re back to a seven-point game, which could go back up to a 15-point game. There’s almost never a right answer. … It’s stressful, exhilarating, by in large, complaints are at a minimum, but when we make a mistake, which is rare, it really gets people upset. The college basketball fan is probably the most rabid fan. … That tournament game, for some schools who only have one or two of them, is enormously important. So if you do anything to annoy them, you’ll hear back.
One thing many have wondered about is the split screens. I remember growing up with the split screens. Why don’t you do that anymore? Do you not want the added pressure for [Greg] Gumbel?
SM: We talked about that this year. We the Wisconsin-Ohio State game and the second-round games like Louisville-Siena and the Michigan State-USC game. We’re going to look at it again. The reason we haven’t is because we got complaints watching that because, unless you had a huge screen, you couldn’t tell what was happening in either game, which audio do you do. Now, with hi-def TV, and when games are running down, second-to-second simultaneously, it might be the lesser of two evils. We got a lot of complaints when we did it 10 or 12 years ago. It’s worth a look, and if we think it will serve the basketball fan better, we’d do it in an instant.
The current contract with the NCAA expires in 2013. Do you worry that CBS will lose the rights? Do you know if ESPN will try and share it? Is the CBS College Sports Network growing quickly enough for where it can supplement the coverage? Or when that contract expires, is it looking like it’s going to be another 10-, 15-year contract with CBS and DirecTV supplementing coverage?
SM: All four of those! I worry about it, I think there’s a chance ESPN will try and get part of it, I think College Sports will play a larger role if we can more distribution for College Sports, and I think, in the end, we will renew the contract in a way that is good for the NCAA and good for CBS. Now, I’m not averse to the possibility of cable doing to the first few rounds, I’m not anticipating it, but if there’s a way we can generate more money for the NCAA, do a better business deal for CBS and still retain the tournament, I wouldn’t close my mind to anything. I think the kind of money we pay right now almost necessitates network coverage. You couldn’t generate a fraction of the money we generate by putting it on ESPN, and I don’t want to speak for them, but I think I’m not sure it’s an event — the early rounds would be good for cable exposure — but once you get to the regional semis, it’s an event for network television. Our track record at CBS is to renew our deals well before they expire. We just did a 15-year with the SEC, in both football land basketball, we renewed our NFL contract four years ago, well before it expired, the U.S. Open in tennis, the PGA Tour.
So now the pressure is on before the pressure’s really on?
SM: Yeah. We have a great relationship with the NCAA. I talk with them all the time. I think it’s the kind of deal that will evolve gradually rather than saying we’re going to negotiate this on the third week in November in 2011.
Talk to me about ratings. They don’t mean much to me, but obviously they have to with you. Do you believe they’re accurate?
SM: They’re important, first and foremost, because it’s how we get paid. They, supposedly, determine how many people are watching and which people. That’s how advertisers pay us. It is the report card advertisers use. I find it difficult to believe that on certain events, like the early rounds of the tournament, we only get a 4 rating. It’s hard for me to believe that 96 percent of the people in this country aren’t watching some of the sporting events on either ABC, NBC or CBS. Listen, I know I live in a certain world where people follow sports, but it’s difficult for me to believe sometimes that the ratings accurately reflect people that are watching sporting events. Advertisers know about viewers in bars, restaurants, fraternities and dorm rooms, but that’s OK. The advertisers pay us an enormous premium and factor that in, because they know more people are watching than are being counted by Nielsen.
My dad used to tell me a story of a guy, every Friday night when he gets paid, he goes into the casino and loses all his money in roulette. Somebody says to him, ‘The roulette wheel is fixed. There’s no way you can win.’ The guy says, ‘I know, but it’s the only wheel in town.’ Nielsen is the only ones out there. … Nobody involved in television can control the ratings, so they shouldn’t ever be a barometer on how good a job you do on a broadcast. If a rating on Super Bowl is low, there seems to be some kind of perception some times that a network didn’t do a good job because the rating is low. Now, on news, it’s a bit different, because over time people decide which they think is the best network broadcast. … Plus, you have a choice in news. If you don’t like the watching of a convention,
You’re responsible for hiring most on-air talent in News and Sports. How does that work? Do you have a bulletin board somewhere: We want that guy, but his contract doesn’t run out for two years. Or, are there agents that know and intentionally shift their clients around. Let’s use James Brown, for example.
SM: All the major news and sports on-air people I am very familiar with. I know Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, etc. But what I don’t know, more particularly in the news area, correspondents or reporters at smaller stations. And it’s purely subjective. I watch a lot of DVDs. I pop it in and say ‘this man or woman has a lot of ability and potential.’ … There are people like Greg Anthony, who was gainfully employed at ESPN. We decided to move Clark Kellogg into Billy Packer’s role. We needed someone to sit at the desk with Greg Gumbel and Seth Davis. I had watched Greg and wondered if he was as good on college basketball as he is with the NBA. I saw him on the golf course one day at Manhattan Woods, where I play golf, and thought he was a smart guy. … So we hired him away from ESPN. You poach your competitors. James Brown, who I think is the best studio host in the business, who was at Fox, we offered him an opportunity to come back to CBS.
Curious about picking a certain kind of writer/non-former player for the studio. Why Seth Davis? Was it the Duke connection?
SM: No, though we are accused, in a light-hearted way, of having too many Duke people work for us. I try to make every decision with on-air talent purely based on who I think is, and who my team thinks is serving the viewer best. Seth is great. I think we have some of the best analysts and on-air broadcasters, but it’s very much like if a doctor goes to a cocktail party and someone finds out he’s an orthopedic surgeon, someone’s going to say to him, ‘You know, I’ve had this tennis elbow, what do you think?’ Well, I go to a cocktail party, and people know I run CBS Sports, I know I’m going to hear what they think about Phil Simms, Jim Nantz or James Brown. And there are people who love certain analysts and people hate others. It’s amazing to me how I will have people say, ‘You know, I love this guy and this guy, but I’ve got to be honest with you, this guy I’ve never been a fan of. Thirty seconds later, I’ll have someone come up to me and say the exact opposite.’
Everyone’s got an opinion and you try to put out there who’s best, but that’s the one thing people love commentating on. … People are also not afraid of offending you, either. They’re not afraid of saying, ‘You know, you’ve guys have had this person doing college basketball for this long. When can you get rid of this guy?’ As if it’s not insulting our judgment, which it is. But listen, that’s why people watch sports television. They love teams, athletes and analysts, and they hate them, too.
But the thing with Bill Packer is, love or hate him, it was a move-the-needle situation. It’s further emphasizing the point, if he’s going to draw this kind of emotion, good or bad, it is, at least, interest.
SM: That’s a good point. The only thing worse than people saying bad things about you is people not saying anything about you. I’m not a proponent of putting on analysts or broadcasters who really annoy and anger people, but if somebody has an edge like Billy had, or like Phil can have, that’s OK. We encourage our analysts to have very strong opinions, they can second-guess a coach in a respectful way, I encourage that completely. It infuriates a lot of hometown fans, but that’s OK.
Was Clark Kellogg assumed to be the successor for the past five years?
SM: It’s been an evolution. He’s going to be a lot better next year than he was this year. He was excellent this year, but that’s a role you don’t grow into overnight. Being the lead analyst is a lot different than the third of fourth analyst. And being courtside is a lot different than being behind the desk. I think he’s going to emerge as the best college basketball analyst, but he still has growing to do. We had a lot of talks after the Big Ten championship, after the first and second round wave.
How often do you travel and how do you balance that with your family life? And for every single major sports event CBS televises, are you always at said event?
SM: I am at our biggest events, yes. My calendar is very well set. I know, starting in January, I’m going to go to the AFC Championship Game, the Super Bowl, Pebble Beach, the Final Four, the Masters, the PGA Championship, the U.S. Open, which is a home game. And that’s really about it. I don’t go to the weekend golf events. If I were single and didn’t have a family, I’d probably travel a lot more. I also make a number of trips to see our major rights holders, the PGA Tour, the folks down at Augusta, which is never a bad trip to make. My travel is not as extensive as you would think, and for News, it’s almost non-existent. I obviously went to the conventions. But if it’s enormous, like another Katrina, I’d go. But for normal news events, I’m much more valuable in the studio. And during the NFL season, I’m in the studio a lot of Sundays, kind of coordinating it from there. All the games come in, I have a direct line to every producer and director. I like to watch 10 minutes of the Jets game, 10 minutes of the Chiefs game, so I can really get a feel for who is really doing what I think is a good job and who needs improvement.
