In First for CBS Sports, K-State Athletics On-Campus Production Facility Is Used for Men's Hoops Linear Game Broadcast Production was a mix of CBS Sports staffers and K-State students By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S. Wednesday, February 5, 2025 - 3:14 pm
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Last year, CBS Sports and the Big 12 Conference expanded their partnership with a deal that included 20 Big 12 men's basketball games per season on CBS Sports Network. A year before that, Kansas State Athletics upgraded its production facilities at an expense of close to $7 million, allowing the school's rightsholders to produce more linear and streaming broadcasts using this state-of-the-art on-campus facility.
CBS Sports used K-State's on-campus production control room for the linear broadcast of the K-State men's basketball team's Jan. 29 matchup against Oklahoma St.
Last week, these two storylines collided when, for the first time in the broadcaster's history, CBS Sports used an on-campus production site for a linear broadcast during the K-State men's basketball team's Jan. 29 matchup against Oklahoma St.
Once the ball tipped, if you were watching this game on CBS Sports Network, you never would know that students were part of this production and it was being done from a facility that we had never used before, says Steve Karasik, SVP, Remote Production, CBS Sports. So overall, I think it was a really successful debut. We plan to use the Kansas State facility in the future and that we will be looking at other facilities in the Big 12 to see if we can add to this and do more in upcoming seasons.
Although ESPN has used K-State Athletics' production facility the past two years for linear productions and since 2015 for streaming events, this marked the first time CBS Sports has used the control room for a linear broadcast.
Obviously, there is always room for improvement, but I thought it was a very good broadcast and was in-line with the high standards for CBS Sports Network broadcast, says Brian Smoller Senior Director of Broadcast Services, K-State Athletics. Their staff was great to work with. I am extremely proud of Andy Liebsch [Sr. Director of Video Services] and our team for all the work they put in each day getting us ready to deliver high quality broadcasts to promote the Big 12 and K-State.
From Manhattan, NY to Manhattan, KS: CBS Sports Goes On-Campus The multi-year deal, which is a sublicense agreement with ESPN, runs through the 2026-27 season. While the CBS broadcast network previously carried a minimum of six Big 12 men's college hoops games annually, this season marks the first time a full package of Big 12 men's college hoops games has been broadcast on CBSSN. So, upon the deal being signed last fall, Karasik began exploring the best way to produce these games for the cable network.
We were really excited about the addition of Big 12 basketball to our CBS Sports Network package because it's a premiere conference with a lot of great teams and a lot of great venues, he recounts. We were told that the Big 12 had started an initiative of doing in-house productions for various sports. We ended up looking at all the schools and identified Kansas State as the one with the best facilities that could do a game up to CBS Sports' standards.
At the end of December while broadcasting a game from Fred Bramlage Coliseum on K-State's Manhattan, KS, campus, CBS sent two of its production staff - Matt Kushner and Alanna Campbell - to check evaluate the venue.
They reported back that the facilities were really good and they thought we would be able to do a game there, says Karasik. So we decided to pull the trigger.
Wildcats Lead the Way: K-State Athletics Ready for the Challenge Since launching in 2012, K-StateHD.TV has been a pioneering endeavor and successful joint venture between the athletics department and university, offering increased exposure for the K-State Wildcats and educational opportunities for K-State students. For live event production, KSHDTV utilizes full-time staff of Powercat Vision office (five) and a pool of 80 freelancers and/or Kansas State University undergraduate students (75% students).
K-State students staffed both replay positions for the CBS Sports Network broadcast.
Hosting broadcasters at their facility has become common practice in the school's Manhattan, KS, campus, primarily with ESPN. With the capability to handle top-tier linear productions with campus staff/students, the Emmy Award-winning K-StateHD.TV production team has continued to do more high-profile events for ESPN and other rightsholders. This includes becoming the first school in the Big 12 to produce home football games from its campus facility.
Like CBS, ESPN's response has been very favorable, and they have been a strong advocate on our behalf to earn more production opportunities, says Smoller. No doubt the experience for our full-time staff and students working with ESPN - and occasional linear events with FOX - the past ten years has helped prepare us to work with a new conference partner in CBS.
In 2023, K-State Athletics completed a multi-million-dollar renovation creating an outside television/streaming production control room and enhanced student training center in the West Stadium Center at Bill Snyder Family Stadium (FB) and a video board production control room in Morgan Family Arena (VB). The control room is outfitted with a Ross Video Acuity 3ME switcher, two EVS XT-Go replay systems (both 5 in-2 out with super-slo-mo capability), a Yamaha QL5 audio console and Ross Video Xpression graphics (three channels for graphics and one for scorebug)
Our administration's commitment to investing in our production space has allowed us to bring the very best quality TV pro
