NFL Kickoff 2024: CBS Sports Overhauls Studio 43 for NFL Today'; Renames Facility in Honor of Sean McManus

NFL Kickoff 2024: CBS Sports Overhauls Studio 43 for NFL Today'; Renames Facility in Honor of Sean McManus Revamped set offers sleek new look, increased flexibility for production team By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.

Friday, September 6, 2024 - 3:44 pm

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Although most of the buzz around CBS Sports' revamped NFL Today studio show centers on the on-air talent shakeup, there's another notable overhaul that will have just as big of an impact for viewers: a soup-to-nuts redesign of the studio set at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York. The newly christened Sean McManus Studio 43 - honoring the recently retired CBS Sports chairman - offers a sleek new look and increased flexibility for the production team.

Photos credit: Mary Kouw/CBS

With new additions to our talent lineup and new technology available out there, we felt it was time to redo the studio to give it a more contemporary and modern look that was also warm and inviting, says Harold Bryant, executive producer & EVP, production, CBS Sports. At the same time, we didn't want to overdo it with the amount of monitors and technology; we wanted to get a good balance between modern and classic. Our goal is to make people feel like the show is continuing to evolve while also sticking to its roots.

The new look had its soft launch last weekend with CBS Sports' College Football Today, but the real debut takes place this Sunday with the season-opening edition of the NFL Today when host James Brown and analysts Bill Cowher, Nate Burleson, JJ Watt, and new addition Matt Ryan go on air. In addition to the NFL Today, Sean McManus Studio 43 will be utilized for a variety of CBS Sports properties including March Madness and college basketball, college football, and studio shows like We Need to Talk.

It's a true renovation from top to bottom, says Tyler Hale, SVP, studio production, CBS Sports. Having this new facility, with the new bells and whistles and a totally new layout, will allow us to present some shows more dynamically and in a more contemporary style. We think it's going to be a great environment for the gang we have on the set now.

Get on Your Feet: Revised Layout Offers More Space to Move and Create The overhaul of the studio - its first in nearly a decade - was completed in just eight months. Although it occupies the same footprint inside the CBS Broadcast Center, the layout was totally rejiggered in an effort to provide the production team additional space and flexibility.

It's not a large studio space compared to a lot of other [major broadcasting facilities], says Bob Matina, director of NFL Today. So one of my objectives was to create more positions for talent to be located. We took our main desk, which has always been facing one of our four walls, moved it so that it's facing a corner. That freed up another wall for us to create a whole other talent position. We want to move around the studio as much as possible and I think we've created a design that really gives us the opportunity and flexibility to do that.

With the revised layout, Matina and his production team plan to get our talent on their feet more than ever before this season. For example, Matina says that roughly half of the Week 1 edition of NFL Today will take place away from the main desk.

One of the driving factors in this design was how to maximize the space as much as possible, says JP LoMonaco, VP, graphics & design, CBS Sports. We have a lot of premier programs that flow through here and it's only one room, so we want to get the most out of it. So versatility was really a big factor for us. We wanted to be able to move cameras and be able to present multiple settings within a single show. The idea was to give [Matina] the tools to create unique areas that could serve different types of segments.

A TechFacelift: LED Displays and Lights, Xpression Tessera Graphics, and the Move to IP Chief among the technological enhancements are an army of new LED displays throughout the studio that are driven by Ross Video's Xpression Tessera graphics system. The new displays include two Planar 1.8 TVF LED screens (1920 2340 pixels) and one Planar 1.8 TVF LED screen (2560 900), a Planar 1.9 CarbonLite Flex LED (1408 320) as the desk screen, and five 98 vertical displays (3840 2160).

In addition, the network completely revamped the lighting grid by converting all units to LED lights that can be remotely controlled from a central lighting panel. In addition to providing the production team with a more seamless workflow, the LED-based system is more energy-efficient in accordance with CBS's sustainability efforts.

While there were no major upgrades made to the Studio 43 control room, which was updated recently, VP of Studio Engineering & Technology, Greg Coppa, and his team did use the studio revamp as an opportunity to continue its evolution from SDI to IP.

We are removing SDI components wherever we can and attempting to get to a fully ST 2110 infrastructure, he says. [For example], we replace our existing color correctors with 2110 color correctors. That significantly improves the picture quality because we're not going back and forth between gateways.

CBS Sports worked with Video Visions to integrate the LED display system and Time Frame Productions for the overall systems integration for backend of the new studio.

Designing for a New Generation of Fan: A New Look for a New Era In terms of the overall look of the studio, LoMonaco and his team knew they had to create a space that could serve not only the NFL but CBS's litany of other properties.

Who we are spreads out over several sort of entities so we had to take all of that into account, he says. We also were very aware that we're going to live with this for a lo

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