In First for CBS Sports, K-State Athletics On-Campus Production Facility Is Used for Men’s Hoops Linear Broadcast

Production crew was a mix of CBS Sports staffers and Kansas State students

Last year, CBS Sports and the Big 12 Conference expanded their partnership with a deal calling for 20 Big 12 men’s basketball games per season on CBS Sports Network (CBSSN). A year before that, Kansas State Athletics upgraded its production facilities at an expense of close to $7 million, allowing the school’s rightsholders to produce more linear and streaming broadcasts using this state-of-the-art on-campus facility.

CBS Sports used K-State’s on-campus production-control room for the linear broadcast of the men’s basketball team’s Jan. 29 matchup against Oklahoma State.

Last week, these two storylines merged in the K-State men’s basketball team’s Jan. 29 matchup against Oklahoma State: CBS Sports, for the first time in its history, used an on-campus production site for a linear broadcast.

“Once the ball tipped,” says Steve Karasik, SVP, Remote Production, CBS Sports, “if you were watching this game on CBS Sports Network, you would never know that students were part of this production and it was being done from a facility that we had never used before. Overall, I think it was a really successful debut. We plan to use the Kansas State facility in the future and will be looking at other facilities in the Big 12 to see if we can add to this and do more in upcoming seasons.”

Although ESPN has used K-State Athletics’ production facility for linear productions for the past two years and for streaming events since 2015, this marked the first time CBS Sports has used it for a linear broadcast.

“Obviously, there is always room for improvement,” says Brian Smoller, senior director, broadcast services, K-State Athletics, “but I thought it was a very good broadcast and was in line with the high standards for CBS Sports Network broadcasts. Their staff was great to work with. I am extremely proud of [Senior Director, Video Services] Andy Liebsch and our team for all the work they put in each day, getting us ready to deliver high-quality broadcasts to promote the Big 12 and K-State.”

From Manhattan, NY to Manhattan, KS: CBS Sports Goes On-Campus

The multiyear deal, which is a sublicense agreement with ESPN, runs through the 2026-27 season. Whereas the CBS broadcast network previously carried a minimum of six Big 12 men’s hoops games annually, this season marks the first time a full package of them has been broadcast on CBSSN. After the deal was signed last fall, Karasik began exploring the best way to produce the games for the cable network.

“We were excited about the addition of Big 12 basketball to our CBS Sports Network package,” he says, “because it’s a premiere conference with a lot of great teams and a lot of great venues. We were told that the Big 12 had started an initiative of doing in-house productions for various sports. We ended up looking at all the schools and identified Kansas State as the one with the best facilities that could do a game up to CBS Sports standards.”

At the end of December, while broadcasting a game from Fred Bramlage Coliseum on K-State’s Manhattan, KS, campus, CBS sent two of its production staff – Matt Kushner and Alanna Campbell – to evaluate the venue. “They reported that the facilities were really good and they thought we would be able to do a game there,” says Karasik. “So we decided to pull the trigger.”

Wildcats Lead the Way: K-State Athletics Are Ready for the Challenge  

Since launching in 2012, K-StateHD.tv has been a pioneering endeavor and successful joint venture of the athletics department and the university, offering increased exposure for the K-State Wildcats and educational opportunities for students. For live event production, K-StateHD.tv has a full-time staff of five from the university’s Powercat Vision office and a pool of 80 freelancers and/or K-State undergrads (75% students).

K-State students staffed both replay positions for the CBS Sports Network broadcast.

Hosting broadcasters — primarily ESPN — has become common practice on the school’s Manhattan, KS, campus. Capable of handling top-tier linear productions with campus staff/students, the Emmy Award–winning K-StateHD.tv team produces high-profile events for several rightsholders and is the first Big 12 school to produce home football games from its campus facility.

“ESPN’s response, like CBS’s, has been very favorable,” says Smoller, “and ESPN has been a strong advocate on our behalf to earn more production opportunities. No doubt, the experience for our full-time staff and students working with ESPN — and occasional linear events with FOX — the past 10 years has helped prepare us to work with a new conference partner in CBS.”

In 2023, K-State Athletics completed a multimillion-dollar renovation, creating an outside television/streaming production-control room and enhanced student-training center in the West Stadium Center at Bill Snyder Family Stadium and a videoboard-production–control room in Morgan Family Arena. The control room is outfitted with a Ross Video Acuity 3ME switcher, two EVS XT-Go replay systems (both 5 -in/2-out with super-slo-mo capability), a Yamaha QL5 audio console, and Ross Video Xpression graphics (three channels for graphics, one for scorebug).

“Our administration’s commitment to investing in our production space has allowed us to bring the very best-quality TV production for our fans, student-athlete families and friends, and school and to add revenue,” says Smoller. “Students who work in our department have landed jobs across the county in sports-media production, from in front of the camera to behind it, and that reputation is earning us more trust from TV partners such as CBS.”

Beyond Kansas State, the Big 12 Conference and new Associate VP, Broadcast and Emerging Platforms, Kauri Black have made it a top priority to work with television partners to utilize on-campus production sites on a more regular basis. Doing so enables ESPN and CBS to eliminate the cost of rolling in full mobile units while maintaining the top-notch production quality expected from a linear broadcast on their respective networks/platforms.

“We are excited about the future of the Big 12 and its TV partners’ using our control rooms,” says Smoller, “not only [to enable] those entities to save operating costs but to grow the next generation of TV-production staff while earning revenue for our department.”

Inside the Broadcast: A Mix of CBS Pros and K-State Students Behind the Scenes

CBS Sports producer Michael Pittman and director Brian Jagoda were at the front bench, and a handful of freelancers worked the show, but many of the technical positions were staffed by 13 K-State students.

The CBS Sports Network college-hoops production was crewed by a mix of CBS staffers and K-State students.

CBS Sports staffed the producer, director, AD, and BA positions, along with the graphics and scorebug operators, but the rest of the crew — camera operators, both replay technicians, audio, TD — comprised K-State staff and students. ARCTEK Satellite Productions handled C-Band transmission for CBS Sports using its Arctek Blue uplink truck.

“[Producer] Michael Pittman and [director] Brian Jagod deserve a lot of credit,” says Karasik, “for having the flexibility and the patience to do a a major basketball conference game with students as some of their technicians and in a control room they weren’t familiar with. On the day of the game, Mike, Brian, and [Coordinating Producer, Remote Production] Todd Keryc told me that the facilities were terrific and everybody was welcoming, buttoned-up, and knew what they were doing.”

Although the workflow for the game was similar to what the K-State team is accustomed to with other TV partners, such as ESPN, there were a few key differences: most notable, the graphics setup. K-State uses Ross Xpression for its graphics packages; and CBS deploys Chyron and SRT for graphics and scorebug, respectively. CBS was able to ship its graphics and scorebug units ahead of time so that Liebsch and company could integrate them temporarily into the control room for the show.

“Once installed,” says Liebsch, “everything operated as if we had always had those machines. CBS had their own style [for running] the show with their open, studio support, and use of an uplink truck, but it was all things that our team was familiar with and prepared for. The CBS feedback on our crew was extremely positive and complimentary on their work ethic and high skill level.”

After a successful first outing, Karasik says CBS Sports plans to use the Kansas State facility again in the future and will also explore the use of facilities at other Big 12 schools for upcoming seasons.

Says Liebsch, “All the students working the show were from our skilled crew who hone their craft on our broadcasts throughout the year. Our talented crew work extremely hard at putting together amazing shows every week. It’s always exciting to work with our TV partners and show them the top-tier facilities and crew we have in place that can help them produce a broadcast that everyone can be proud of.”