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CBS News & Sports
President Sean McManus |
SEAN MCMANUS is wearing two hats these days. As President of CBS Sports since ’96, he led the acquisition (and later renegotiation) by the network of broadcast rights to the NFL and extended its broadcast rights for the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament and the PGA Tour. As newly named President of CBS News, he takes on a dual role so famously made at ABC in ’77 by
ROONE ARLEDGE, with whom McManus’s father, legendary sports broadcaster
JIM MCKAY, collaborated. That same year, McManus began his professional career at ABC Sports as a production assistant before moving to NBC two years later as associate producer and to Trans World International in ’87 as Senior VP. McManus spoke shortly after his new appointment with SportsBusiness Journal
New York bureau chief
Jerry Kavanagh.
| Favorite vacation spot: The Breakers in Palm Beach and home with my family. |
| Favorite piece of music: “Maggie May” by ROD STEWART and “Johnny B. Goode” by CHUCK BERRY. My daughter’s name is Maggie, and those are my kids’ favorite two songs. |
| Favorite author: ERNEST HEMINGWAY. |
| Favorite quote: It’s by WINSTON CHURCHILL, and it’s on my desk in both News and Sports: “We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.” |
| Favorite sporting event: The Masters. |
| Favorite movie: It has to be “The Godfather.” |
| Last book read: It’s going to sound like I’m making this up, but I’m not. It’s BOB SCHIEFFER’s book, “This Just In.” And I just reread “Roone.” |
| Typical day off: The perfect day off for me is golf early in the morning with TONY PETITTI and the afternoon with my family. |
| Athlete you most enjoy watching: TIGER WOODS when he’s on CBS. |
| Best career decision: Probably in 1979 to leave ABC Sports, where I’d been given a great break because of who my father was, and go work for DON OHLMEYER and JEFF MASON at NBC Sports, which was a little scary since I had grown up at ABC. But to make that move really enabled me to develop as Sean McManus and not as Jim McKay’s son. |
| Best advice you received: It was from my father, which is to be true to yourself and to be your own man. And if you do that and you’re talented enough, everything else will fall into place. |
Q: RABELAIS wrote, “One falls to the ground in trying to sit on two stools.” How will you be able to keep your balance as president of CBS Sports and CBS News?
McManus: Probably 95% of my time now is being spent in the news division. I’m fortunate in that my No. 2 in sports, Tony Petitti, is more than qualified to not only maintain what we have achieved at CBS Sports but indeed to take it to the next level. I’m involved in the PGA Tour negotiations directly, but other than that I’m going to be an overseer and let Tony run the operation. So, I’m not sitting on two stools right now. I’m sitting on one stool and I’ve got my hand on another one.
Q: Of the time you spent with Arledge, you said, “I’d like to think some of his genius rubbed off on me.” What was his genius?
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McManus Hopes To Emulate
Arledge’s Successful Style |
McManus: No. 1, he understood the importance of on-air talent and building stars, whether it was PETER JENNINGS, DAVID BRINKLEY, TED KOPPEL, Jim McKay or HOWARD COSELL. He understood how much of your identity really is placed in the people who are in front of the camera. No. 2, he understood that all good television basically comes down to good storytelling. And whether he was telling the story of a sporting event or of a major news event, he had the best storytelling sense of anyone I’ve ever seen in television.
Q: How would you characterize your management style?
McManus: I’d probably want to ask other people who work for me. I would say I’m very involved in all aspects, whether its production or operations or business affairs or programming because I like all of those. I try to give the people who work for me a great deal of flexibility and liberty to do their jobs without interference, but I really want to be kept abreast of everything that is going on. I’m fiercely loyal to the people who work for me, but conversely expect just as much loyalty in return. And I want people who are working for me to really enjoy being at either CBS Sports or CBS News. I think I’ve accomplished that at CBS Sports and I believe I will accomplish it at CBS News.
Q: Let’s talk a little about your father, Jim McKay.
McManus: I learned a lot of lessons from him also. First and foremost, when you’re on television, you can’t fool anybody. Your personality and whatever’s inside you comes out. He always told me that when he was on television, he never imagined that he was talking to millions of people; he imagined that he was talking to one or two people. He wanted to talk to the audience, not at the audience. And he also firmly believed that he was not [part of] the story of an event he was covering, that the athletes and the competition were the story. You want to tell the story, you want to do your job well, but you want to get out of the way. He was great at doing that at the right times, and it’s a lesson that more young sportscasters should pay attention to.
Q: Your father went from sportscaster to newscaster without warning at the 1972 Olympics at Munich when terrorists seized and killed 11 Israeli athletes. You were there at the time. What do you recall most vividly?
McManus: The surreal nature of being around a group of men I had watched produce television programs my entire life and, all of a sudden, this same group of men was producing one of the most dramatic and compelling news events in history, and the entire country was watching. I don’t think the magnitude of the event dawned on anybody until we got home a couple of weeks later and realized how big a story it was and how many people were completely reliant on my father and Roone’s production team for what happened that day.
Q: How do you assess the state of broadcast journalism today?
McManus: The job that reporters are doing is generally exemplary. One of the dangers, more on cable certainly than on network, is that in an effort to draw ratings, intelligent dialogue, to a large extent, has been replaced by shouting. I love good debates and I love opposite and divergent points of view being shared on television, but I think at times the rhetoric is dialed up too high just to attract more viewers. But I think if you look at the quality of the coverage of Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq or any host of other events, I think the coverage is unbelievably good across the board.
Q: You said, back in 1998, that “because television generates the lion’s share of income in most sports, sports have to balance adjusting themselves to become more attractive to television and maintaining the integrity of the sport.” How difficult has that been?
McManus: I don’t think it’s been difficult at all. I think the leagues have done a good job of accommodating television without compromising the competitive balance. I think the one issue that is probably most arguable is start times of games. That’s the one area that all of us are a bit susceptible to. But quite frankly it comes out of pure economics. If the leagues are going to get paid the kind of rights fees they are paid, it’s incumbent upon the networks, which are in fact a business, to maximize revenue. And regrettably sometimes maximizing revenue means starting games later than any of us would like to.
Other than that, I can’t think of too many instances where the competitive nature or the enjoyability -- if that’s a word -- of a sporting event has been compromised to satisfy television. Would we like fewer commercials in our football games? I’m sure we probably would, but I think people are getting used to commercials in all sports. So, from my point of view -- and I’m probably not totally objective -- I don’t see that it’s harmed sports irreparably.
Q: STEVEN BRILL has referred to “the overall scream culture that is too often cable television.” Overall, CBS has always seemed more reserved, or less noisy, in its productions than other networks. Is that an approach you strive for?
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McManus Says CBS Has Made A Conscious
Effort To Be More Contemporary |
McManus: I wouldn’t say we have strived for that. It goes back to what I was saying about letting the story be the important part of your telecast and not the person who is covering that story or the graphics or the music in that story. Doing the best job you can and letting the events play out as events. ... In the last couple of years, Tony Petitti and I have tried to make our image at CBS Sports a bit more contemporary. I think that is clearly evident in our NFL and college basketball coverage, both in terms of the music and the production values. And I think we are drastically more contemporary than we were five or six years ago. That’s on purpose and was done with a plan in mind.
Q: Everyone, it seems, from movies and television to newspapers and magazines, cultivates a younger audience. Letterman had a Top 10 list to attract younger viewers. Do you have your own list?
McManus: My primary goal is not to attract younger viewers to the ‘Evening News.’ The ‘Evening News’ viewers are always going to be older, and I’ve accepted that. Trying to get the 18- to-34-year-olds to watch the ‘Evening News’ is not a priority, and if it was, it would be an unrealistic priority. They just aren’t watching the news at 6:30. That’s not their viewing pattern. I’m trying to get a better share of the audience that is currently watching the three evening newscasts and, secondarily, if I can lower the average age and attract some younger viewers, I’ll be satisfied.
