Legends Behind the Lens: Neal Pilson The master negotiator brought an era of stability and paved a prosperous future path for CBS Sports By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital Friday, June 26, 2020 - 11:31 am
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The story of American sports television is engrained in the history of this nation, rising on the achievements of countless incredible men and women who never once appeared on our screens. During this pause in live sports, SVG is proud to present a celebration of this great industry. Legends Behind the Lens is a look at how we got here seen through the people who willed it to be. Each weekday, we will share with you the story of a person whose impact on the sports-television industry is indelible.
Legends Behind the Lens is presented in association with the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame and the SVG Sports Broadcasting Fund. In these trying times - with so many video-production professionals out of work - we hope that you will consider (if you are able) donating to the Sports Broadcasting Fund. Do so by visiting sportsbroadcastfund.org.
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By Jason Dachman
Whether in the boardroom, at the negotiating table, or evaluating a sports telecast, Neal Pilson demonstrates a preternatural knack for making the right decision at the right time.
During 19 years at CBS, including 13 as president of CBS Sports, Pilson helped transform the Tiffany Network into a live-sports-programming goliath and earned a reputation as a tenacious but honest negotiator and cerebral tactician. Departing CBS in 1994, he launched consulting firm Pilson Communications Inc. (PCI) and has played an integral role in the negotiations for billions of dollars in sports-rights deals over the past two and half decades.
Neal has been a force in the sports-business industry for decades, says CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus. With rights deals ranging from the NFL, NBA, MLB, PGA, the Masters, and NCAA football and basketball and Final Fours to the Olympics and NASCAR, his legacy of building and upholding the tradition of CBS Sports is as much a part of our long and storied history as are the great events and moments we have broadcast.
Yale Law, Metromedia, and the William Morris Agency
The New York City native earned an AB in history at Hamilton College, where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa and played varsity basketball. Graduating from Yale Law School in 1963, he spent six years at a small private New York City law firm.
Incidentally, I did a lot of work writing up contracts for clients, he remembers. So those six years in a law firm doing contracts work turned out to be very useful.
Hearing about a job opening at Metromedia through a friend from his political career (Pilson served as a village trustee in Ardsley, NY), he landed a job in the law department writing up contracts for the media company, which owned dozens of TV and radio stations and produced original content for the broadcast networks and for syndication. He soon transitioned to business affairs, finding himself at the head of the negotiating table for the first time.
That was a critical change in my career, he says, because I was now responsible for negotiating deals rather than just writing up the deals. All of a sudden, I was the lead pony at the [negotiating] table.
Six years later, Metromedia closed its entertainment division, and Pilson headed the law department for the William Morris Agency. That short stint ended when CBS came calling with an offer to revamp its sports operation, which ranked third in the three-network world that existed at the time.
Dawn of the CBS Era: A Rising Star at the Tiffany Network
Becoming director of business affairs for CBS Sports in July 1976, Pilson was tasked with building up its stable of live sports properties. Although CBS's marquee rights included the NFL, NBA, the Masters, PGA golf, and US Open tennis, much of its coverage was tape-delayed and relegated to the CBS Sports Spectacular program.
We had a few [marquee] properties but not many, Pilson says. So we were aggressively looking for live programming, rather than [tape-delayed] events.
After wresting the rights to the World Figure Skating Championships away from ABC and landing a handful of other up-and-coming properties for live coverage, Pilson worked with Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Barry Frank, who was CBS Sports president at the time, and NASCAR announcer Ken Squer on one of the most important rights deals in the history of sports television: a deal with NASCAR for flag-to-flag live coverage of the 1979 Daytona 500, as well as races at Talladega and Charlotte. Until then, NASCAR had been relegated primarily to post-event coverage on ABC's Wide World of Sports. The move proved to be a windfall for CBS and would elevate NASCAR from a regional property to one of the most popular sports in the U.S.
Neal brought stability to [CBS Sports]. I look back at Neal's run as the golden age of CBS Sports. former Fox Sports executive Ed Goren
Neal played a critical role in the entire development of the sports-rights [business], says Frank. He and I worked together to accomplish the NASCAR deal with CBS, and that was a major factor in the growth of NASCAR. Subsequently, when he was president of the sports division, he played a huge role in all of the negotiations. He was extremely successful in bringing those rights to the network and making deals that made a lot of sense and were extremely fortuitous.
The CBS Sports Presidency: Building Up a Store of Rights
By 1981, CBS was looking to establish stability atop its sports ranks, which had four presidents in just five years. The network turned to Pilson - by that point, a rising star at the Tiffany Network - who, at age 41, became the youngest president in CBS Sports history.
I felt like I
