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NAB Show New York: CBS Sports Chairman Predicts Slow Broadcast Transition to UHD

NEW YORK — It’s likely going to take more time for Ultra High-Def (UHD) to be fully embraced in the traditional broadcast TV industry, according to CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus. “I think it’s going to be just like high definition” TV (HDTV), he predicted, during a TV2020 conference keynote held in conjunction with NAB Show New York Oct. 17 at Jacob Javits Convention Center.

When HDTV was introduced, “it was very expensive to do” and “a lot of companies, including CBS, did side-by-side telecasts” with standard definition (SD) broadcasts of the same programming, he noted, adding: “We found manufacturers – Sony was the major sponsor and paid for the upgrading of the trucks and the upgrading of the production – and we rolled it out fairly slowly. And some stations were able to broadcast in HD and some weren’t.”

But he recalled: “Eventually, the mobile unit companies upgraded, so that all the cameras were HD. The stations upgraded so they could receive HD. And, I think at some point, you’ll see the same thing happen with the next generation – whether it’s 8K or whether it’s 4K.”

There’s already been select sports events in 4K, he noted, adding DirecTV “paid us to produce a 4K package” for portions of the Masters and other golf broadcasts, although not the entire broadcasts, he said.

CBS Sports and other networks “don’t need to be pushed” into broadcasting in UHD by the NFL or other leagues, he said, telling the conference CBS Sports was one of the first networks to broadcast NFL games in HD.

“We could be doing a lot more programs exclusively in 4K,” he told the conference, adding: “The reason we’re not” is that “the stations don’t have the ability to broadcast in that format” yet. “Hopefully, technology will catch up, just like it did with HD…so that we can broadcast in the highest definition possible,” he said.

He predicted UHD has a much better chance for success than 3D TV did or virtual reality (VR) so far: “3D was just something that doesn’t work for sports television. It’s fine for a couple of hours – a couple of minutes – but long-term it doesn’t make any sense” and VR “doesn’t seem to be catching on either.”

But he said: “I think 4K falls more in the category of HD than it does some of the newer technologies that just have not been applicable to sports coverage.”

McManus also predicted that sports rights will continue to be “valuable” to broadcast and cable TV companies. Deals for sports rights often “seem ridiculous,” but they “always seem to make sense in the final analysis,” he said, pointing to NFL rights as an example. It was widely reported in early 2018 that Fox paid the NFL more than $3 billion to get Thursday Night Football rights for five years.

“Fox is going to lose, I think, a lot of money on Thursday Night Football,” but that “doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good deal for them,” he said, adding: “Fox did a really smart thing in getting 11 Thursday nights where they are guaranteed to win the primetime ratings race on a given night.”

But he said: “For us, it wasn’t a good deal. We didn’t think that losing as much money as Fox is going to lose makes sense for CBS [because] we’re so strong in primetime anyway” with the current schedule of established programming schedule it has.

CBS Sports remains in “constant contact with the NFL on all sorts of issues,” he went on to say, predicting there will be a “really interesting negotiation” between his company and the NFL when it comes time to try to renew the rights CBS Sports now has for Sunday AFC games. Financial discussions probably won’t start until there’s a year left on the current contract, he said. The current deal runs through 2022.

CBS Sports continues to be interested in carrying those Sunday games because “NFL football is the most valuable programming in all of television – it’s what, to a large extent, is helping to drive the retransmission revenue that we’re getting” and it’s “just the biggest hammer out there,” he told the conference.

He predicted negotiations with the NFL “will be spirited” and “there will be a lot of competition,” but he said: “I’m confident that we’re going to protect our territory, which is the AFC package.”
It remains to be seen how much of a player the large technology companies will be in the battle for NFL rights, he also said.

“We’ve all seen that Netflix and Amazon and Apple are spending billions of dollars in original programming and original content,” he noted. But he said: “I think the verdict is very much still out whether they will spend the amount of money necessary to get involved in big-time sports rights.” Still, he noted, the tech giants are “all experimenting in it” and “dipping their toes” in it, and he predicted those companies will “make a decision when the next big deal comes up.”