L
ast month, CBS Sports’ production staff was shooting a “Thursday Night Football” promo that used live fireworks. It was Deanna O’Toole’s responsibility to make sure the shoot ran smoothly. “We had to make sure that we had everything in place to do the shoot,” O’Toole said. “I had to be sure that there are no live animals in that one.”
Deanna O’Toole
CBS SPORTS,
VICE PRESIDENT, BUSINESS AFFAIRS
This is a snapshot of O’Toole’s life at CBS Sports, a life in which she wears many hats. O’Toole handles everything from clearing music and video rights for broadcasts to conducting talent negotiations. “There’s so much stuff that goes on that doesn’t fit neatly into production or operations or press or programming,” O’Toole said. “I get a lot of that stuff. We do logo approvals, commercial spot approvals and a lot of clearances with the different music that we integrated.”
When it comes to overseeing talent and production negotiations, that work involves everyone from on-air announcers to behind-the-scenes producers and writers.
“Deanna is a very fair negotiator on behalf of her network,” said Sandy Montag, a talent agent who heads up The Montag Group. “She has a great understanding of the market as a whole and does a great job on using that knowledge to develop and manage the talent structure at CBS Sports.”
This fall, O’Toole’s life is consumed by “Thursday Night Football,” which became much trickier this year now that Twitter will stream the games. “That makes it more interesting because we’ve got to make sure that we clear everything across all those different platforms,” she said.
— John Ourand
