DEEP DIVE
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rom the NFL and college football to NCAA March Madness, The Masters, PGA Championship, and everything in between, the CBS Sports operations and engineering teams are on a constantly moving train. VP, Remote Technical Operations, Jason Cohen; VP, Engineering and Technology, Mike Francis; veteran director Mark Grant, and EVP, Operations and Engineering, Patty Power look back at 2022 and address the year’s greatest challenges and triumphs. On how CBS Sports’ operations, engineering, and production teams work together: Power: I’m just so proud of our team and how well we all work together. Our operations, engineering, and production teams are in a good groove. It’s truly a marathon from September to June, and then we have the rest of the golf season. I’m also proud of how well we work with our partners, both leagues and other networks. We do a lot of joint productions with [WBD Sports], ESPN, DirecTV, and others. On how technology has impacted CBS Sports’ golf coverage: Francis: Golf is a unique sport to cover, as anyone who has dealt with it understands. There is a lot of geography [to cover], so you need a lot more cameras and personnel to get everything done. On the technology front though, it’s one of our favorites, because there’s so much [technology] out there. A lot of the golf technology, such as ball tracing, really adds to the coverage in a way that we didn’t have in the past. If you watch a golf shot without a trace [graphic], you have to wait until it lands to understand if it was a good shot. But, with
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SPORTS PRODUCTION 2023 YEARBOOK
CBS Sports relied heavily on data-fueled AR graphics for its coverage of NCAA March Madness in 2022.
ball trace, you can get a good idea right away if it’s going to be a good shot or if he shaped that shot to play to the contours of the course. On the challenge of producing golf majors on a massive scale: Francis: The majors are more than just what you see on the CBS and ESPN air. They are multi-show events with dozens of trucks, and everything has to be interconnected. Craig Stevens and Evelyn Jackson on our team do an amazing job at making a seamless transition so it is one massive production facility in these extremely busy compounds. We also have great partners in NEP and Game Creek and F&F. Everyone comes together to operate as one production team. From the NFL to golf and everywhere in between, CBS Sports is constantly looking to add more cameras and technology to its coverage.
