CBS Sports’ President Dishes on Upcoming All-Female Sports Talk Show
At long last, many are saying. CBS Sports Network will launch “We Need to Talk,” an all-female, hour-long sports talk show beginning September 30, featuring accomplished female athletes, broadcasters, team executives and journalists presenting their take on the most timely issues in sports. A few of the panelists include Pro Football Hall of Fame sportscaster Lesley Visser, former CEO of the Oakland Raiders Amy Trask, NFL and NCAA reporter Tracy Wolfson, CBS Sports Radio host Dana Jacobson and Allie LaForce, lead reporter for the SEC ON CBS. We spoke with CBS Sports’ president David Berson about the groundbreaking new show.
President of CBS Sports David Berson
Why do you think it’s taken so long for an all-female show like this?
I can’t speak to why other places haven’t looked to launch a show similar to this but obviously we are extremely excited to be doing it. It’s, frankly, long overdue. And we think that CBS is the right place for it. Here and in many places women already play such meaningful roles in all of our sports coverage, and to be able to put a bunch of very highly accomplished women together to talk sports is something we’re very excited about.
It’s all female producers, directors and writers, right?
All the hosts and panelists are women. The two producers are women; the two coordinating producers are women; the director of the show is a woman. The full staff will be a mix of men and women—there are many people who work on it. And we anticipate having men as guests at times when warranted throughout the season, but it’s an all-women cast—something we’re very proud of.
In terms of topics covered, will they be focused more on women in sports?
It’s a sports talk show featuring women. It’s not intended to be a women’s sports issue show. We’ll of course cover all kinds of topics and all kinds of issues, but it’s meant to be a sports show. Social issues and women’s issues will be discussed when warranted, but that’s not the sole focus of the show.
What kind of format are you looking at?
We have some new elements that we plan to roll out and those will be fine-tuned between now and launch. We have some really interesting ideas—it’s not the typical show that many people have seen for years and years with men sitting around. We have some new, different ideas but it will primarily be the cast of folks that we announced today, dissecting all the issues that are touched in the sports world. We’re going to reveal some more of that as we get closer and launch the show.
Who is your expected audience with this? Are you seeking out a female demographic?
We feel strongly that this show will cater to all sports fans.
The experts appear to be more focused on the NFL. Will you focus on some of CBS Sports Network’s up-and-coming sports as well?
I think it’s actually a mix. We have people that have spent a lot of time on the NFL and will, especially for this flight of the show, being in the fall for football season. We think that makes sense. But we actually think that a lot of the folks we have here touch a lot of different things. We have Olympic athletes. We have basketball players. We have tennis players. We have news journalists. We have people who work on college football, NFL… we think we cover sports as whole. There are a lot of women that we have who have covered football and various other areas so maybe that’s why you perceived it that way, but we don’t feel it’s NFL skewed. We feel that we’ll be able to properly cover all sports.
Will you do any cross promotion with NFL Thursday nights?
We will certainly be publicizing and promoting this show across the various entities at CBS Sports specifics, such as Thursday Night Football or other elements. We haven’t quite finalized those plans yet, but safe to say this will be highly promoted across the portfolio of CBS.
You mentioned that you’ve received overwhelming feedback about the show thus far.
The news of the show had leaked several weeks ago and we kind of confirmed it at the time but waited until now to actually announce. And in these last several weeks, as word spread but before we announced, the enthusiasm and support from everywhere has been astounding—internally and externally. It feels great at CBS Sports and frankly I think in the sports industry as a whole that so many people are so enthused about an idea that is long overdue.