The NFL on CBS is an American television sports presentation show broadcast by CBS. It aired from September 30, 1956, to January 23, 1994. The show returned since September 6, 1998. It consists of branding used for the presentation of National Football League (NFL) games.
From 2014 to 2017, CBS also broadcast Thursday Night Football games during the first half of the NFL season, through a production partnership with NFL Network and steaming on Paramount+.
History CBS' coverage began on September 30, 1956 (the first regular season broadcast was a game between the visiting Washington Redskins against the Pittsburgh Steelers), before the 1970 AFL–NFL merger. Prior to 1968, 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 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. Since 1975, game coverage has been preceded by pre-game show The NFL Today, which features game previews, extensive analysis and interviews.
1950s In August 1956, the DuMont Television Network, 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 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, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Washington, Green Bay, Chicago and on the Pacific Coast (Los Angeles and San Francisco).
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 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 time to make it a profitable venture. Thus they also dropped out and the game was not televised.
By 1959, CBS had at least 11 teams under contract. The Cleveland Browns were still the lone exception.
1960s 1960 saw the addition of a new team to the NFL in the form of the Dallas Cowboys. 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. NBC continued to televise 13 Sundays involving either the Colts and Steelers (the odd week was when NBC had the World Series) 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 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 opted not to carry that 1961's annual telecast of The Wizard of Oz, running a Green Bay Packers football game instead. In contrast to the infamous Heidi telecast in 1968, 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 NFL followed the American Football League'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 and 1965 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 games for two years, spanning 17 games each season. In an interview with The New York Times, 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 of President John F. Kennedy, the NFL played its normal schedule of games. Commissioner Pete Rozelle 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, 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 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 and 1963, CBS would provide separate audio for a telecast (for instance, if the Green Bay Packers hosted the Chicago Bears, the telecast would have the same video, Chicago area viewers watching on WBBM-TV would hear Red Grange and George Connor call the action; meanwhile, viewers in Milwaukee and other parts of Wisconsin — 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 games for NBC. Ultimately, CBS dumped the four-man crew and resumed the 1962–63 method for the great majority of games in 1965, 1966 and 1967.
CBS' afternoon exhibition telecast of Dallas vs. San Francisco 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-Cleveland game (called by Glieber and Pat Summerall) however was not tape-delayed. it was the nightcap of Art Modell's exhibition doubleheader that ran from 1962-71.
On November 25, 1965 (Thanksgiving Day), CBS featured the first color broadcast of a regular-season NFL game, the traditional Thanksgiving Day game at Detroit. 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, 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, the Playoff Bowl and the Pro Bowl. In 1966, most of the network's NFL games were broadcast in color, and by 1968, 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, 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 and 1967 NFL Championship Games (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, stepping up from the sole regular season color telecast in 1965, including all postseason games. The Week 1 game between Baltimore 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 idle, Eddie LeBaron filled in for Summerall on the Cleveland-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 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 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 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-Washington game, Jim Gibbons worked with Johnny Sauer for first half while Ed Thilenius worked with Sauer for second half.