Football on CBS

nfl on cbs

Football on CBS has been a staple for the network since the 1950s. During the NFL season, CBS broadcasts all regular season and playoff games, as well as the Pro Bowl, NFC Championship game, and Super Bowl. In addition, the network also carries several NFL preseason games.

Until the 1970s, most of the network’s football games were broadcast in black and white. However, in the 1960s, first Pat Summerall and then Frank Gifford became color commentators on the network’s NFL telecasts.

The network experimented with a number of different announcer formats in the late 1950s and 1960s. During the early and middle years of the decade, CBS often used pooled video with split audio, meaning that the game would be broadcast by both teams’ home markets (and their affiliates beyond a 75-mile radius), with the different teams’ announcers calling their respective halves of the telecast.

A notable exception occurred on November 24, 1963, two days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The NFL’s commissioner, Pete Rozelle, decided that the league should play its normal schedule of games because “sports thrive on competition.” The telecasts were aired without commercial interruption, and the regular network programming was replaced with non-stop news coverage of the events surrounding the assassination.

On October 31, 1966, CBS televised its first-ever prime time NFL game in color (a Dallas Cowboys-St. Louis Rams contest). It was a national Monday night telecast that was not carried by its competitor, NBC. Jack Drees did the play-by-play for the first half, and Lindsey Nelson and Frank Gifford called the second.

In 1981, the network began a 21-year partnership with John Madden, and that same year, the network’s director, Sandy Grossman, introduced a widescreen format to the broadcast, which featured footage of outside linebackers. This format was revolutionary for the time, and it allowed Madden and Gifford to provide more detailed analysis of the game.

By the 1990s, most CBS football telecasts were shot in high definition, but some (mainly non-essential camera positions) continued to be broadcast in 4:3 SD until 2009. The network debuted new on-air graphics with its February 7, 2009 Super Bowl 50 broadcast that was broadcast in 16:9 HD.

In addition, in 2008, the network redesigned its NFL bug, with the scores displayed in a gold-colored text on a blue background and the quarter/time information below in white text on a blue background. CBS O&O stations around the country that carry the local teams — including WCBS; KDKA, which covers the Pittsburgh Steelers; WFOR, which covers the Miami Dolphins; KTVT, which serves the Denver Broncos; and KPIX in Sacramento — have retained these graphic elements. In contrast, a number of other NFL games on Fox and ABC are produced in a more modern graphic design.