Broadcasting: CBS and Turner Sports Remain Calm Behind the Madness

The NCAA Division 1 Men's  Basketball Championship, also known as March Madness, is a daunting challenge from a television production standpoint. The live airing of 32 games over two days is on par with both the Olympics and soccer's World Cup when it comes to a tough broadcasting job.

This is the third year of a 14-year collaboration between CBS Sports and Turner Sports that allows fans the chance to see all the games in their entirety on CBS, TNT, TBS and truTV.

For Harold Bryant, the Executive Producer and Vice President of production for CBS Sports, March Madness is an event that he looks forward to each year. I spoke with the man in charge of the production about how he and his Turner Sports counterpart, Senior Vice President of Production Craig Barry, make this event work so smoothly.

How has the partnership between CBS and Turner worked out thus far?

Bryant: We have been able to work quite well together. We had to develop a uniform look across all media platforms. All the music, graphics and on-air look has to be the same no matter whether you are watching a game on CBS, TNT, TBS or truTV.

The broadcasters do the same promos and we run the same ad spots across every platform. The CBS production team in New York is in constant contact with the Turner Sports team in Atlanta to make sure that everything we do together is seamless and that we look uniform in our game and studio coverage.   

Talk about the production effort:

Bryant: Our remote trucks get to the arenas on Tuesday for the Thursday games and Wednesday for the Friday games. From a technical side our team will set up the cameras, place the microphones in all the right places in the arenas so we don’t miss a shot and we capture the true atmosphere of each game site.

Meanwhile, our broadcasters will meet with all of the coaches and the teams to get all of the background needed to develop the storylines that we will use on the telecasts.   

What are things like at the CBS broadcast center in New York?

Bryant: We have 125 or more staff members working around the clock on everything from game highlights to our studio shows. You have to remember that we are live for over 12 hours a day both Thursday and Friday.

The people working in the New York Broadcast Center also coordinate with CBS Sports Network, which is providing the support programming including commentary on all the games that are happening as they watch them, as well as previewing the upcoming matchups and airing the post game press conferences.  

We of course are working closely with our studio team headed by Greg Gumbel, Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Greg Anthony and Kenny Smith in New York, along with Matt Winer, Seth Davis and Steve Smith in Atlanta.

They will be doing pregame, halftime and postgame shows almost nonstop as one game ends and another begins over a 12 hour span both Thursday and Friday. I can tell you that no matter if it is our broadcast and production teams at the game sites or the studios crews in New York and Atlanta there is no other place we would rather be than covering this great event. Plus all of the people working on our team at CBS Sports or at Turner Sports knows this is a marathon and not a sprint, so we understand how to pace ourselves over a wild 48 hours starting Thursday at noon and ending around midnight eastern time Friday.

All of the quotes were obtained first hand via a phone interview arranged by CBS Sports.