Like the Viewers, CBS Sports Boss was in the Dark
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When the lights went out at the Super Bowl, the players and the fans weren't the only ones in the dark.
So was CBS Sports and their boss Sean McManus.
The LA Times writes that McManus initially wasn't sure whether only CBS had lost power or if something bigger had happened. "We lost all communication to announcers and had to call (play-by-play announcer) Jim Nantz on his cellphone."
"If this had been in the CBS compound that would have been a bigger problem," he said in an understatement.
Still, numerous CBS cameras were out and the network scrambled to fire up its back-up generator and put its pre-game set back together so the CBS Sports Super Bowl on-air team could get back on camera to fill time while the National Football League tried to figure out how to get the lights back on.
McManus acknowledged that the network should have done a better job of communicating with viewers about what was going on at the Superdome when the lights went out. The problem, he explained, was that CBS itself was trying to find out what had happened. It was not a case of knowing something and not disclosing it.
"We were asking everybody at every position what was happening and the fact of the matter is we just didn't know," he said. Actually, McManus said, he still has not gotten an explanation on what caused the failure. Still, if he had it to do over again he would have pushed harder to get an NFL representative on camera.
