CBS Sports activities To Develop AFC Protection, Convey Again Trolly Cam, Pylon Cams, Stay Drone

Postseason slate opens with Miami-Buffalo, potential neutral-site AFC Title Sport

Recent off its most-watched common season of NFL protection in seven years (common 18.487 million viewers), CBS Sports activities prices into the playoffs this weekend with an enormous recreation on the AFC facet of the bracket. The broadcaster is in Buffalo for the second-seeded Payments’ matchup with the seventh-seeded Miami Dolphins (Sunday, 1 p.m. ET, CBS).

It’s the lone recreation of the weekend for the staff at CBS, which is targeted on filling up Highmark Stadium with greater than 60 cameras — together with a Skycam and a number of Pylon Cams — in addition to its signature enhancements, such because the Sports activities Emmy-winning RomoVision.

“I feel we’ve accomplished a very good job during the last couple of years of increase our weekly regular-season recreation to the purpose the place it resembled very considerably what a Wild Card recreation used to appear like,” says Jason Cohen, VP, distant technical operations, CBS Sports activities. “After we now go from Week 18 to the Wild Card, it’s nearly an extension of the common season. We add amenities, cameras, expertise enhancements, replay servers, and so forth to the Wild Card, after which we carry on increase by means of the Divisional [Round] and on the [AFC] Championship [Game]. Each spherical escalates a bit of bit extra, sure, however now the leap from the common season to the Wild Card is in no way nice.

“It permits us so as to add to the present with out utterly disrupting a whole lot of the muscle reminiscences that construct all through the season,” he continues. “Expertise additions turn out to be just a bit further for situational worth. It’s not a landmark shift the place they need to rethink how they’re producing the present.”

MORE: CBS Sports Execs Focus on Bringing ‘A’ Game Resources to More Events

Every week, the present will develop in dimension throughout this NFL Playoff season. One notable addition on the broadcaster’s to-be-determined Divisional Spherical recreation subsequent week is the return of Trolly Cam, the point-to-point cabled aerial digital camera system supplied by Flycam. Trolly Cam’s run extends a couple of rows again over the seats on the close to sideline and might zip alongside at speeds of as much as 65 mph. The system presents a singular look that debuted in CBS Sports activities’ NFL Playoff protection in 2021.

There are plans for drone protection at CBS’s video games. Relying on the venue, it might be ENG-based or stay with assist from the staff at Beverly Hills Aerials.

Additionally beginning with the Division Spherical subsequent week, CBS will deploy Fujinon’s new HZK25-1000mm lens. The native–PL-mount lens was launched within the U.S. final month and has since labored a few of its first occasions, together with a regular-season NFL recreation on CBS, a Monday Night time Soccer recreation, and the CFP National Championship for ESPN.

“We are going to play with totally different potential capacities for that lens to be part of our broadcast,” says Cohen, “whether or not it’s capturing field-level or a lot of what ESPN did in a excessive–end-zone capability. We need to combine that lens since it’s a number of the newest and best lens expertise.”

For the playoffs, Aerial Video Techniques (AVS) is offering two RF cameras (one a shallow–depth-of-field rig utilizing a Sony FX9), video returns, expertise screens, and comms. A number of distributors are offering Pylon Cams: Broadcast Sports activities Worldwide (BSI), C360 (just lately acquired by Cosm), and 3G Wi-fi.

Developed with Genius Sports activities and its Second Spectrum expertise, RomoVision, the graphics-based instant-replay enhancement utilized by analyst Tony Romo continues its run after winning the George Wensel Technical Achievement Award at last year’s Sports Emmys.

“ONE OF THE GREAT THROWS YOU’LL SEE ALL YEAR!!”@tonyromo HYPED UP by this elite Josh Allen x Stefon Diggs TD 🙌

📺 CBS | Paramount+
pic.twitter.com/iF5It7z6BI

— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) January 8, 2023

Sport assets can be beefed up by means of the month, with extra super-slo-mos, EVS machines, and even Sony servers (4K zoom and extraction) to assist the 4 Sony 4800’s slated to be deployed on the AFC Championship Sport.

NEP Supershooter CBS (A, B, C, and D items) — the A-game truck in the course of the common season — can be onsite in Buffalo and journey to every recreation that CBS will produce this playoff season. CES Energy is offering the mills to assist every compound all through the month; it has supplied the community’s redundant energy for the whole 2022 marketing campaign.

CBS will broaden its compound for the AFC Championship Sport with F&F Productions GTX 20 A and B items becoming a member of the celebration to assist onsite pre/postgame and halftime studio exhibits. Sport Creek Video’s new Prime QC truck can even be added to function the QC facility.

Coordination of the CBS compounds is overseen by VP, Distant Operations, Tom McShane, who’s answerable for Operations and Planning with Director, Distant Operations Planning, Kristen Florian. Broadcast Operations, in the meantime, is led by VP, Broadcast Operations, Scott Davis, who works with Alyssa Blake, George Dimotheris, and Chris Rahner.

CBS Sports activities’ prime NFL recreation every week is produced by Jim Rikhoff and directed by Mike Arnold. CBS Sports activities won the Sports Emmy last year for Outstanding Playoff Coverage for its protection of final 12 months’s insane Divisional Spherical recreation between the Payments and Chiefs in Kansas Metropolis.

The place the AFC Championship Sport can be hosted has been a preferred subject of dialog the previous couple of weeks. The league introduced on Thursday that, if the AFC Championship Sport had been to pit the top-seed Kansas Metropolis Chiefs towards the second-seed Payments, the sport can be performed at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. The uncertainty, in fact, is because of the cancellation of the Payments’ recreation towards the Cincinnati Bengals on Jan. 2, after Buffalo‘s Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest on the sector. The cancellation leaves the Payments with one fewer recreation performed than the Chiefs, disrupting a good seeding of the groups for home-field benefit. Final week, the league office approved a resolution to “mitigate potential competitive inequities.”

Cohen says the potential of a neutral-site recreation poses just about no problem to CBS since broadcasters are usually in a week-to-week journey mode at this level within the season. Plus, CBS has loads of expertise broadcasting faculty and NFL video games out of the 5½-year-old venue, together with the SEC Championship Sport every December and Tremendous Bowl LIII, which CBS broadcast from there in February 2019.

As for the journey to the AFC Championship Sport, CBS Sports activities does benefit from the “luxurious” this season of getting to supply only one recreation in every playoff weekend. The hassle is spearheaded by Cohen and CBS Sports activities EVP, Operations and Engineering, Patty Energy. Cohen oversees distant technical operations with Jenna McKeon and Adam Stouter. Engineering and planning is led by VP, Engineering and Expertise, Mike Francis, together with Evelyn Jackson, Craig Stevens, and Jeff Millet.

Whereas there’s all the time a want to do extra, Cohen says, his manufacturing and operations teams are motivated to place their full give attention to a single manufacturing every week.

“I feel we’ve confirmed over time that, whether or not now we have an A and a B recreation or now we have a recreation with Nickelodeon, we all know the best way to allocate correct assets and bandwidth to every of our playoff video games to make it particular,” he says. “With the storylines that now we have proper now that the manufacturing staff is zeroed in on, we’re prepared to inform the right tales following the Buffalo story and the potential neutral-site recreation. There’s a lot happening with this specific postseason that it’s good to only be capable to observe these tales and provides the appropriate share of protection.”

The NFL on CBS kicks off its NFL postseason on Tremendous Wild Card Weekend when the Buffalo Payments host the Miami Dolphins on Sunday at 1:00 p.m. ET.