NFL on CBS

• 1. Origins And Early Broadcasts

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  On the 30th of September 1956, the first regular season NFL game aired on CBS television. The matchup featured the visiting Washington Redskins against the Pittsburgh Steelers. This broadcast marked a pivotal shift in sports media history when DuMont Television Network ended its operations that August. CBS had to negotiate individual contracts with each team rather than securing league-wide rights immediately. Every club except Cleveland joined forces with CBS during this initial phase. The network divided its coverage into nine regional networks including New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Chicago. Games often utilized split audio where viewers heard different announcers depending on their location relative to the home team's market. A 75-mile radius defined these boundaries for most broadcasts. By 1959, CBS held contracts with at least eleven teams while the Cleveland Browns remained the sole exception.

• 2. Technological Evolution And Color

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  the 25th of November 1965 brought the first color broadcast of a regular-season NFL game to Detroit. Only two games that entire season were shown in color despite the new technology being available. By 1968 all network telecasts transitioned fully to color broadcasting. the 29th of December 1965 saw CBS acquire rights for the 1966 and 1967 seasons for eighteen point eight million dollars annually. This represented a sharp increase from the fourteen point one million paid just two years prior. The network also purchased Super Bowl rights for twenty million dollars per game starting in 1966. An the 21st of August 1965 exhibition game between Dallas and San Francisco was interrupted by live coverage of the Gemini V space mission blastoff. Fans called the station in anger over the interruption. The following year CBS abandoned pooled video feeds and returned to separate audio tracks for regional audiences before eventually standardizing again. On the 31st of October 1966, the St. Louis Cardinals defeated Chicago Bears 24-17 during what may have been the first prime-time NFL telecast ever shown in color.

• 3. The Summerall Madden Partnership

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  the 25th of November 1979 marked the first time Pat Summerall and John Madden worked together on a Minnesota Vikings versus Tampa Bay Buccaneers broadcast. Their pairing began after CBS executives decided Madden would become their star color commentator. Director Sandy Grossman started working with both men that same year and maintained the partnership for twenty-one seasons. They called their first Super Bowl together on the 24th of January 1982 when the San Francisco 49ers beat Cincinnati Bengals 26-21. That game achieved a forty-nine point one rating making it the highest-rated Super Bowl at the time. The telestrator known as the CBS Chalkboard made its major network debut during this broadcast allowing Madden to diagram plays directly on screen. During a New York Giants versus Cincinnati Bengals game in 1991, producer Bob Stenner and director Grossman made over eleven hundred decisions about camera angles alone. Their duo defined CBS coverage for nearly two decades until Fox acquired rights in 1993.

• 4. Labor Disputes And Strike Coverage

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  A CBS technicians strike beginning in early 1972 disrupted numerous NFL games across the country. Some broadcasts were covered by local crews while others went untelevised entirely. Billy Joe Patton and Bill MacPhail filled in as substitute announcers when regular staff refused to cross picket lines. On the 4th of November 1973, KPIX experimented with simulcasting between San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders games but received many complaints from viewers. The strike caused CBS to cancel several scheduled telecasts including Week 11's Philadelphia-New York matchup. In 1982 an NFL players strike shortened the season from sixteen games to nine. CBS rebroadcast Super Bowl XVI during the first Sunday of that strike to fill airtime. The league instituted a special sixteen-team playoff format called the Super Bowl Tournament due to the shortened schedule. Geographical divisional standings were ignored and top eight teams from each conference were seeded one through eight based on records. This resulted in regional television broadcasts for the first time in history.

• 5. The Fox Bid And Network Loss

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  the 18th of December 1993 marked the day Fox won the broadcast rights to the National Football Conference after outbidding CBS significantly. Fox placed a record bid of fifteen point eight billion dollars for four years of rights compared to CBS's two hundred ninety-five million annual offer. Laurence Tisch agreed to increase CBS's bid but could not match Fox's nearly four-hundred-million-dollar yearly commitment. The loss stripped CBS of all NFL coverage following the 1993 season resulting in a four-year absence from football broadcasting. Fox hired former CBS personalities including Pat Summerall John Madden James Brown Terry Bradshaw Dick Stockton and Matt Millen to build their new sports division. News Corporation struck an alliance with New World Communications on the 23rd of May 1994 allowing twelve stations to switch affiliations from CBS to Fox starting in September 1994. CBS lost key affiliates in Atlanta Detroit and Milwaukee where ratings declined sharply. The network ended up relegated to UHF stations with marginal signals in certain markets. CBS admitted decades later that it never fully recovered from losing those key affiliates through the New World-Fox deal.

• 6. Return To The Airwaves

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  the 6th of September 1998 signaled CBS's return to NFL television after acquiring American Football Conference rights from NBC. The network had spent four years without any professional football broadcasts while rebuilding its sports division. Don Criqui returned to CBS calling Eagles-Giants games alongside Sonny Jurgensen shortly after the acquisition. On the 8th of December 1987 Cathy Barreto became the first woman to direct an NFL game at the network level during a Minnesota Vikings-Detroit Lions telecast. By 1998 CBS introduced the All-Iron Award for Thanksgiving games following the Turkey Leg Award tradition started by John Madden. The network also debuted a new music package composed by E.S. Posthumus replacing older themes used since 1993. Greg Gumbel and Terry Bradshaw signed off for one last time before CBS aired a photo montage set to Yanni's instrumental After the Sunrise during their final NFC Championship Game broadcast on the 23rd of January 1994. That game featured Dallas Cowboys defeating San Francisco 49ers thirty-eight to twenty-one.