March Madness Marks a New Era at CBS Sports as David Berson Oversees First Tourney as President/CEO, Ken Mack Takes Top Producer's Chair It's the 14th NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament for CBS Sports/TNT Sports partnership By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Thursday, March 20, 2025 - 11:04 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
It's one of the great sports days of the year: the first day of the First Round of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.
This year, it marks the 14th time that CBS Sports and TNT Sports have collaborated on producing and distributing every game of the tourney - including the First Four, which took place on Tuesday and Wednesday evening.
CBS leads the way this year, carrying the Final Four and Championship Game on its air. All in all, CBS - in its 43rd year broadcasting the tournament - will televise 24 games, including Elite 8 and Sweet 16 games. TBS will televise 18, including Elite 8 and Sweet 16 games. truTV will air or simulcast 21 games, and TNT rounds out the lineup with 12 games in the opening few days.
This truly is a one of the most iconic few weeks of the annual sports calendar, says CBS Sports President/CEO David Berson. It captivates the country for a few weeks, and we can't wait to get it started.
David Berson became president and CEO of CBS Sports in April 2024.
The tourney marks a milestone for Berson, who took the mantle as head of CBS Sports last April when Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Sean McManus officially retired following last year's Championship Game and The Masters golf tournament.
Berson joined CBS Sports as EVP of CBS Sports and president of CBS Sports Network in January 2011, which means that he was at McManus's side essentially from the beginning of CBS Sports and then-Turner Sports' unique March Madness partnership.
[The transition] has been really, really seamless, Berson acknowledged on a media call. I give a tremendous amount of credit to Sean. He and I worked side by side, truly, for well over a decade. Every meeting, every trip, every meal, every negotiation - we were together. We're still in touch regularly. We're great friends. I give him a ton of credit for getting me prepared, but a ton of credit goes to our team. We've got an incredible team that cares so much about quality and likes working together.
Says TNT Sports Chairman/CEO Luis Silberwasser, [David] has been an instrumental part of the TNT Sports and CBS partnership for many, many years. David is a great friend to me. He's a great partner, and we have an incredibly strong foundation to build on together.
Veteran CBS Sports producer Ken Mack takes over as lead producer on this year's NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.
Another key change behind the scenes occurs this year as 34-year CBS Sports veteran Ken Mack takes over as lead producer of the event. This follows last year's retirement of Mark Wolff, who had occupied the lead chair since 2011 and had been a producer for various CBS Sports properties since 1984.
Mack has a wealth of experience in this event, having served as a producer on NCAA tourney games for many years. In fact, he was lead producer on the very first First Four game, when the concept was introduced to the tournament in 2011. The year prior, he was the producer on CBS Sports' first 3D broadcast of the Final Four and Championship Game.
Ken's a very seasoned producer who has been with us for several decades, says Berson. He has been working on the tournament for a very long time. It's another example of our seamless succession planning. [Lead Director] Mark Grant took over for [Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer] Bob Fishman just two years ago. [We are] really, really proud of this team.
Outside of college hoops, Mack has served as a producer on seven Super Bowls and has been in the producer's chair for the Nickelodeon NFL telecasts.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
March Madness Marks a New Era at CBS Sports as David Berson Oversees First Tourney as President/CEO, Ken Mack Takes Top Producer's Chair It's the 14th NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament for CBS Sports/TNT Sports partnership By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
