The 20 Biggest Mess-Ups/Mistakes in CBS History

[danderson400]

one moment i do remember about CBS and baseball in 91 my CBS station(WSPA in Spartanburg) stayed with a Braves Dodgers game after a rain delay when just the Alanta CBS station was supposed to do so.. i was shocked when that happened of course two weeks later CBS did that split screen with Dodgers Giants when the Braves were playing in Houston and won and the Giants game went into extras..

[danderson400]

Originally Posted by TMC

In 1989 (the last time that ABC had the baseball package before it moved to CBS), Gary Throne was the #2 play-by-play man (working w/ Joe Morgan) behind Al Michaels (who worked w/ Tim McCarver and Jim Palmer on the "A-Team"). So it would be easy to assume that Throne and Morgan would've called the other League Championship Series had ABC maintained baseball going into 1990.

The one problem though is that in 1990, Joe Morgan moved over to ESPN to start his 2 decade long stint on Sunday Night Baseball w/ Jon Miller. Would Morgan have still split duties on network TV like he would eventually do on NBC from 1994-2000 (granted, NBC didn't broadcast regular season games beginning in 1996 when The Baseball Network dissolved).

As for NBC, I'm highly confident that had they not lost the MLB package after 1990, then Vin Scully would've continued in the role as the lead play-by-play announcer alongside Tom Seaver (w/ Bob Costas and Tony Kubek backing them up). I mean, it would be pretty stupid to try to chase off arguably the best to ever broadcast the game in Vin Scully.

Here's a database of literally every national television Major League Baseball broadcast ever:
http://sabrmedia.org/databases/netwo...tv-broadcasts/

but i wonder who would have done golf for NBC in 90? remember they used Gumbel(even though he was hosting Today at that time) but maybe Scully does golf with Charlie Jones filling in(but they would have wanted Vin to anchor their first Ryder Cup in 91)

[KurtfromPitts]

Ending a tradition of having comedies in the Monday night 9-10 ET hour, one going back probably to "I Love Lucy". While the eyeball net will still have comedies in the 8-9 hour, it won't be the same in the following hour after so many decades.

[danderson400]

Originally Posted by danderson400

one moment i do remember about CBS and baseball in 91 my CBS station(WSPA in Spartanburg) stayed with a Braves Dodgers game after a rain delay when just the Alanta CBS station was supposed to do so.. i was shocked when that happened of course two weeks later CBS did that split screen with Dodgers Giants when the Braves were playing in Houston and won and the Giants game went into extras..

i remember also how the Dodgers Giants game on CBS kept going on and on while on my NBC station there was a "On Scene" episode with a look at rescue efforts following the 1990 crash of Avianca Airlines Flight 52 in New York, which were hampered by bad weather and heavy traffic i remember watching both until the Giants killed any chances of the Dodgers forcing a playoff with a home run i also remember the late Jack Buck(or maybe it was Dick Stockton) doing that game from San Fransisco

[Michael cole]

Shortening MacGyvers episode order from 23 episodes to like 13 episodes.

[bmasters9]

Originally Posted by Michael cole

Shortening MacGyvers episode order from 23 episodes to like 13 episodes.

Why are you putting this on the CBS mistake thread? It should be on the ABC one, because ABC was the network where MacGyver was originally. CBS is the distributor for the DVD releases (or at least was for the last two or three, IIRC).

[Michael cole]

Oops! I accidentally put here because the dvds have the CBS signature and I thought it was on CBS because of CBS's signature on the dvds.

[TMC]

10 Shows CBS Should Be Embarrassed About Canceling

[Crusinforabrusin]

Renewing survivor and big brother for the 28 season. 2Awful shows. Can't understand why they keep on getting renewed

[king of comedy]

I've never seen these 2. But I heard Big Brother is stupid.

[icecream]

Originally Posted by Family Matters

Renewing survivor and big brother for the 28 season. 2Awful shows. Can't understand why they keep on getting renewed

I have no interest in those shows but they do well in ratings, so they're not going anywhere.

[bmasters9]

Originally Posted by Family Matters

Renewing survivor and big brother for the 28 season. 2Awful shows. Can't understand why they keep on getting renewed

Survivor, especially! I'll admit that it does have its fanbase, but I have never been and will never be part of it!

[James28]

Another big mistake by CBS: Screwing over Person of Interest by reducing the order for that season to just 13 episodes and then cancelling it. Plus, the network waited until May to start airing that season. Even after all that positive critical reception and excellent ratings for its first couple of seasons, CBS still axed PoI because it is produced by Warner Bros. TV and not by the network's in-house studio.

[megamanj2004]

1990 - Outside of picking up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the rest of their Saturday Morning fare and their daytime programming (save for Wheel of Fortune, which was one of their big blemishes and mistakes in the daytime ratings) 1990 was a nightmare year for CBS. Their 1990-91 campaign slogan ad they called a Dream Season was actually a Nightmare Season for them.

1990 was the beginning of their massive slide in the sports department when they lost longtime stalwart Brent Musberger to ABC Sports (following the April Fools' Day telecast of the NBA Playoffs). They would eventually lose the rights to the NBA over to NBC Sports after their telecast of the 1990 NBA Finals. Then they severely overpaid for MLB and bombed after 3 years, only for FOX to snatch it up and air MLB ever since.

They also lost or was about to lose longtime stalwart shows in Newhart, Falcon Crest and Dallas, the latter would enter its final season in that Fall of 1990. They picked up the rights to The Hogan Family and paired it up with another Miller-Boyett show in The Family Man and neither struck gold for them, thanks to the terrible moves they made with both shows, especially the former.

Their CBS News post-Walter Cronkite era wasn't very kind to them, especially during Dan Rather's tenure with the CBS Evening News in particular.

During Dan Rather's time with The CBS Evening News, it slid to 3rd Place behind The NBC Nightly News w/ Tom Brokaw and ABC World Evening News Tonight w/ the late Peter Jennings where it stayed for years. Outside of 60 Minutes since, CBS was the weakest of the original Big 3 Networks in the News Department. Also, the George W. Bush Documents controversy also caused Dan Rather to get sacked as anchor of the CBS Evening News and from his post on 60 Minutes Two and CBS as a whole.

[danderson400]

[QUOTE=TMC]The biggest mistakes that CBS made w/ their 1990-93 MLB coverage (at least in my estimation):
*Not hiring Vin Scully to be their lead play-by-play man. After NBC lost the MLB package to CBS following the 1989 season, Scully was for all intents and purposes, a "free agent". Scully of course, worked at CBS prior to joining NBC in 1983. Scully would've given CBS instant credibility (similar to when Fox hired Pat Summerall and John Madden to front their NFL coverage in 1994). I'm guessing that CBS wanted to put their own personal "thumbprint" and they that that Scully was too intertwined w/ NBC's coverage.

*Pairing Jack Buck together w/ Tim McCarver. As great of an announcer Jack Buck was in his own right, he just never fit or adapted as well it seemed like on TV. I don't know exactly whose fault it really was, but Buck and McCarver were arguably like "oil and water". I know that Jack Buck was a last minute replacement for Brent Musburger (and Buck and McCarver arguably didn't have enough time to develop a proper rhythm together), but Buck was perhaps too much of an "old school" type of announcer to really translate well to a modern TV audience.

*Overemphasizing Tim McCarver. McCarver during his prime, was arguably the best color commentator on TV (he and Tony Kubek were probably the first real "modern day" baseball color commentators on TV). The problem however, is that Tim McCarver (even back then) arguably had a bad habit of being too verbose and being over-analytical. McCarver was perhaps able to get away w/ that w/o much trouble at ABC because he was often on big games a paired w/ Al Michaels and Jim Palmer. But at CBS, they pretty much anticipated or expected him to be the main star, instead of the play-by-play man (this is in part, what got Jack Buck in trouble).

*Their non-consistent and erratic regular season scheduling (add to that that they broadcast even less regular season games than NBC did). CBS could literally go a whole month w/o broadcasting a baseball game because of their other sports commitments like golf. It became quite apparent that CBS lived and breathed for October so that they could have a better platform to promote their fall shows.

*Overpaying for the MLB package by about $500 million. 

CBS could have given up some of their other sports commitments like golf. Maybe ABC would have been happy to get some of the golf events that CBS had back then. CBS also had NASCAR at that time. Maybe giving up the races they had during summer to ESPN could have worked too. Also, CBS could have carried some Sunday doubleheaders in place of reruns of 60 Minutes during the summer. the baseball games might draw a few more viewers to the network during that time, and CBS could have scheduled prime time to start at 8:00. Also, CBS could have given up their CFA deal to ABC to do more games in September. I'm sure that ABC would have loved to have the CFA one year earlier.
Also i would have NOT overemphasized Tim McCarver, since CBS could have signed Jim Palmer to work with Buck on the main crew. A Buck/Palmer team would have been very good and would have gotten praise from viewers as well as critics.