NHL on CBS

New York Rangers games on WCBS (1945–1948)

CBS' affiliation with the National Hockey League technically goes as far back as the 1945–46 season, when its flagship station, New York's WCBW (later WCBS) televised New York Rangers games through the 1947–48 season. Bob Edge provided the commentary during the first two seasons and Win Elliot for the final season, when WCBW officially became WCBS. The hockey telecasts from this era only used two cameras.

The commercial spots for Knox Hats were done and aired live from a small studio elsewhere in Madison Square Garden. They required a considerable amount of rehearsal with a four-way hook-up connecting the live commercial, Win Elliot's cage, the CBS studio, and the Garden's control room. All of this necessitated instantaneous cueing by director Herbert Bayard Swope Jr. The commercials from the Garden's other two sponsors, Ford and Maxwell House were decidedly less complicated to produce. For instance, the Ford commercials were exclusively done by film from the CBS studio.

1956–1960 NHL Game of the Week

CBS broadcast its Saturday afternoon National Hockey League "Game of the Week" program starting in the 1956–57 season to 1959–60 season. Bud Palmer served as the play-by-play announcer, while Fred Cusick did color commentary and interviews for the first three seasons. In 1959–60, Cusick moved over to play-by-play while Brian McFarlane came in to do the color commentary and interviews. McFarlane was originally banned by American Unions in early January 1960 from working the telecasts, as they revoked his card. The pregame and intermission interviews were done on the ice, with the interviewer on skates. No playoff games were televised during this period, and all broadcasts took place in one of the four American arenas at the time.

During the 1956–57 season, CBS broadcast 10 games on Saturday afternoons, starting on January 5, 1957. The ratings were deemed good enough that the following season saw the slate expanded to 21 games, and 20 games for the 1958–59 season. The network continued airing games on Saturday afternoons through March 19, 1960. CBS ceased telecasting the NHL nationally when it cancelled its contract on July 22, 1960. CBS was generally happy with viewer ratings for its NHL Game of the Week. However, only showing the same four American teams, without the Toronto Maple Leafs or Montreal Canadiens willing to play Saturday afternoons in the United States, caused viewership to drop by 1960 and was the reason the network did not renew its TV contract. The four American franchises–at the time consisting of the Boston Bruins, the Chicago Black Hawks, the Detroit Red Wings, and the New York Rangers–each received US$7,000 per game. This new revenue stream was not shared with the players as they received absolutely no money from the television deal. In October 1957, the nascent NHL Players Association filed a lawsuit against the league's ownership and won an out-of-court settlement whereby James Norris, Jr. and Arthur Wirtz agreed to pay money into the players’ pension fund.

Schedules

The Toronto Maple Leafs did not appear on the schedule because the team played at home every Saturday night during the season.

1967–1972 contract

In 1963–64, CBS offered to broadcast an NHL Game of the Week on Saturdays during the National Football League season. By the winter, CBS would move the Game of the Week to Sundays in the same time slot. Ultimately, the NHL rejected the idea, saying it would cause too many scheduling and travel problems. The league was especially worried about a game from Montreal or Toronto being played on a Saturday afternoon (and not on Saturday night to accommodate CBC Television), and teams having to play an early afternoon game on Sunday after playing a game the previous night.

Coverage

For six seasons, from 1966–67 through 1971–72, CBS aired a game each week between mid-January and early-mid May in every season, mainly on a Sunday afternoon, including playoffs. Each American-based franchise was paid US$100,000 annually for the first two years of the initial contract and $150,000 for the third. From 1968–69 through 1971–72, the intermission studio was called "CBS Control," just like with its NFL coverage.

Due to prior programming commitments, CBS did not broadcast regular season games during the 1966–67 season, so that portion of the package was subleased to RKO General, which syndicated eight regular-season games to some cities, including the four U.S. cities that then had NHL clubs and the six U.S. cities that would gain new teams in the 1967 expansion. During the 1967 playoffs, CBS was scheduled to broadcast the April 8 game between the New York Rangers and Montreal Canadiens. However, an AFTRA strike forced the cancellation of the telecast. The strike itself ultimately ended two days later.

CBS started its weekly 1967–68 coverage with the opening game (the Philadelphia Flyers vs. Los Angeles Kings) at The Forum in Inglewood, California on December 30. Then after three more Saturday afternoons, CBS switched to covering Sunday afternoon games beginning on January 28 for the next 10 weeks. On March 10, 1968, CBS broadcast a game at Chicago Stadium between Toronto and Chicago. In a precursor to the "Heidi fiasco" on NBC a few months later, CBS decided that the game was over, the Hawks leading 3–0 with 50 seconds left, and went to a children's movie called The Goalkeeper Also Lives on Our Street.

Due to another strike by AFTRA (which resulted in the cancellation of a New York Rangers-Montreal broadcast last year), CBS started its playoff coverage with a CBC tape of the previous night's Boston-Montreal game. On April 13, CBS started its three-week-long weekend afternoon Stanley Cup coverage, ending with the St. Louis-Montreal game 4 on May 11. For the playoffs, Jim Gordon worked play-by-play, and Stu Nahan worked color commentary. During the regular season, the pair alternated roles each week. For instance, Gordon worked play-by-play on December 30 while Nahan worked play-by-play the next week.

In 1968–69, CBS broadcast 13 regular season Sunday afternoon games and five Stanley Cup playoff games. Dan Kelly did play-by-play while Bill Mazer did color commentary and intermission interviews.

As part of The CBS Sports Spectacular (1976 and 1979–1980)

Super Series '76

On January 4, 1976, CBS decided to televise the Soviet Wings/Buffalo Sabres Super Series game nationally. They likely did not expect very many viewers (except those in and near Buffalo and "rink rats" elsewhere) to watch as the game went head to head with the AFC Championship Game on NBC. The game also had to be over by 3:30 p.m. EST so that CBS is ready to broadcast the pregame for the NFC Championship Game. So to save two minutes, they cut "O Canada" much to the dismay of those attending at Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

The game did extend past 3:30 p.m. Eastern time, so CBS ended the telecast seconds after the final buzzer went off, allowing CBS to air as much of an abbreviated NFL Today pregame show before the NFC Championship game as possible.

1979 Challenge Cup

1978–79's Challenge Cup replaced the All-Star Game. It was a best-of-three series between the NHL All-Stars against the Soviet Union national squad. In the United States, Game 2, which was held on a Saturday afternoon, was shown on CBS as part of CBS Sports Spectacular. The network refused to expand CBS Sports Spectacular to carry the game in full so instead, the show came on during the first intermission, showed taped highlights of the first period and then showed the second period live, then showed the third period on tape later. The lead-in to Sports Spectacular was The World's Strongest Man.

The network, the show, and their sponsors had a problem with the rink board advertising that the NHL sold at Madison Square Garden, and refused to allow them to be shown on television. As a result, CBS viewers were unable to see the far boards above the yellow kickplate, and could only see players' skates when the play moved to that side of the ice. Games 1 and 3 were shown on the NHL Network, where the advertising was no problem.

Dan Kelly and Lou Nanne were the commentators while Dick Stockton served as the host.

1980 Stanley Cup Final

CBS only aired one other NHL game following Game 2 of the 1979 Challenge Cup. That would take place on May 24, 1980, with Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Islanders. CBS was mainly influenced by the United States men's Olympic hockey team's surprise gold medal victory (dubbed "The Miracle on Ice") in Lake Placid several months prior. CBS agreed to pay $37 million to broadcast the sixth game. In return, the NHL happily moved the starting time from prime time to the afternoon. Preempting CBS Sports Spectacular, the Saturday afternoon game was the first full American network telecast of an NHL game since Game 5 of the 1975 Stanley Cup Final aired on NBC. As previously mentioned, when CBS broadcast Game 2 of the 1979 Challenge Cup, it was only seen on CBS for the third period.

Game 6 was won in overtime by the host Islanders, which captured the first of their four consecutive Stanley Cups. By this time, Dan Kelly, did play-by-play for the first and third periods as well as overtime, was joined by former NHL on NBC commentator, Tim Ryan, who did play-by-play only for the second period. In addition, Minnesota North Stars general manager Lou Nanne was the color commentator throughout the game.

81% of CBS' affiliates reportedly carried Game 6. WTVT out of Tampa, Florida, aired reruns of Ironside, Adam-12, and The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams instead of the game.

Game 6 pulled a 4.4 rating on CBS. In the New York area, the game's rating and share were 10.2 and 37 respectively. Meanwhile, in Chicago, the respective ratings and share were 1.6 and 6. In Los Angeles, where CBS' telecast started at 11 a.m. local time, the game drew a respective 2.4 rating and 10 share.

After the game ended, except for its owned-and-operated stations in New York City and Philadelphia, CBS discontinued the telecast and went to a previously scheduled golf telecast. New York and Philadelphia viewers saw a post-game show before the network joined the very end of the golf broadcast. Given that the game went into overtime, CBS cut away from hockey during the intermission between the end of regulation and the start of overtime to present ten minutes of live golf coverage, with the golf announcers repeatedly mentioning that the network would return to hockey in time for the start of sudden-death.

Failed 1994–95 bid

After Fox outbid CBS for the rights to the package of National Football League (NFL) games it had held for decades (and losing Major League Baseball after the league opted to launch its ill-fated The Baseball Network effort), CBS entered the bidding to regain the NHL rights beginning in the 1994–95 season, only to again be outbid by Fox, which agreed to pay US$155 million for the five-year broadcast contract.

Incidentally, during the 1990s, CBS had the American broadcast television rights to the Winter Olympics (1992, 1994 and 1998). The network used Mike Emrick (1992 and 1994) and Sean McDonough (1998) on play-by-play for the ice hockey coverage, John Davidson (all three Olympics) and Mike Eruzione (1992 and 1998) on color commentary, and Darren Pang as the ice-level reporter (1998). Emrick would however, serve as the play-by-play announcer for the women's hockey coverage in 1998 (the first time that women competed in Olympic hockey) alongside color commentators Joe Micheletti and Digit Murphy and ice-level reporter Ellen Weinberg.

In 2010, CBS Sports president Sean McManus said regarding the prospects of the NHL returning to CBS in the foreseeable future "It's a great property, but with our commitment to golf and college basketball, there just isn't room on our schedule." As a result, CBS did not place a bid for the broadcast rights when negotiations went underway before the pending 2011 expiration of NBCUniversal's contract with the league, being the only major network not to place a bid. The Comcast-owned networks (NBC and Versus, later NBCSN) renewed their existing deals through 2021. Likewise, when Comcast opted not to renew its contract with the NHL in 2021, CBS did not make a serious effort to acquire the rights.