Pity CBS Sports. The network got all dressed up to attend a football game, and a genuine news story broke out.
The controversy surrounding the National Football League's handling of Ray Rice - who was disciplined lightly, then disciplined again, for domestic abuse - intruded on plans to launch the hard-won Thursday football package, even forcing a last-minute change to the program's opening. Yet CBS host James Brown introduced the show almost treating the Rice affair as an inconvenience, noting, "There is a football game to be played," before turning to analysts Bill Cowher and Deion Sanders to ask how they would prepare for such a contest.
"They need to put all the mess aside and focus on this game at hand," said Sanders, suggesting that pros were paid to overlook "distractions."
"It's time to focus on football," play-by-play man Jim Nantz said, alluding to the Rice "crisis" -- as analyst Phil Simms put it -- and then quickly changing the subject. (Nantz was later heard on a hot mic, but, as usual, had nothing interesting to say even then.)
Always good to see where a studio show's priorities are.
CBS Sports President Sean McManus might have spoken about the division's journalistic responsibilities on Thursday, but those were on holiday during the 25-minute pre-game show. Indeed, by any measure, this was an abdication on that level.
For CBS, the swirl of publicity and pressure to cover the Rice situation - and calls for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's resignation - threw a wet blanket, in theory, over the Thursday launch, a cornerstone of its fall TV campaign. The game fell even more directly under the spotlight because it pitted what was until this week Rice's team, the Baltimore Ravens, against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Goodell had already conducted an interview -- with CBS News' Norah O'Donnell, naturally -- about the disturbing inside-the-elevator video that surfaced this week via TMZ, but that only fed the "What did you know, and when did you know it?" questions. Not that a casual observer would know any of that from tuning in on Thursday night.
Still, as was noted in this space a few days ago, NFL fans are seldom distracted for long by scandals. And while all the negative publicity besetting the NFL is surely unwelcome, team owners no doubt have a pretty clear sense of just how bullet-proof their product is, if the unbending loyalty of viewers through past embarrassments -- and friendly treatment from their "broadcast partners" -- provides any historical guide.
So CBS found itself in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't position on Thursday night -- and conspicuously chose the latter. But like most things pertaining to football, one suspects everything will look a whole lot brighter when they see those big, fat overnight ratings in the morning.
© 2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
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