James Brown has had a long broadcasting career. Originally employed by CBS to be a basketball analyst, Brown evolved into a play-by-play man calling both basketball and the NFL.
Starting in 1994, he became a studio host being the original front man for Fox NFL Sunday. The following year, he hosted the NHL on Fox. In 2006, J.B. returned to CBS as the host of the NFL Today and he began hosting Thursday Night Football on CBS/NFL Network this season.
In addition to hosting the NFL on CBS, Brown is a special correspondent for CBS News making occasional appearances on 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Sports and a fill-in anchor for the CBS Evening News.
Awful Announcing recently sat down with Brown on a day in-between hosting the NFL Today and Thursday Night Football.
Awful Announcing: What is the energy like being at games for Thursday Night Football as opposed to being in the studio for the NFL Today?
James Brown: From an announcer’s perspective, it’s the best blending that you could have. You know I started at CBS doing play-by-play so the excitement of being at the stadium, talking with the players and the coaches, getting the game plan firsthand, being able to witnesses the strengths and weaknesses of the players and seeing how that’s going to play out in a competitive contest. There’s nothing like the enthusiasm, the vibe, the excitement of being on-site.
And then when I started in the studio, clearly that’s the opportunity to put the face on the game. There’s constant air time if you want, and certainly the guys love that. To me, this is the best of both worlds. I didn’t want to get stale only being in the studio because again, not being in the field as I call it or the game site, you don’t get an opportunity to actually get some immediate feedback from the players and/or the coaches so that you could overlay that on all that you’re setting the stage for the audiences tuning in for all the games, so it couldn’t be better than to have a blending of on-game site and as well as in the studio.
Awful Announcing: What was it like to be in Baltimore for the first Thursday Night Football game with what was going on with Ray Rice and the NFL? What was the atmosphere like?
JB: Having been at this for a fair number of years, it was actually exciting for me because it was the blending of news and sports and we were blessed to have the Chairman of CBS Sports Sean McManus there and at one point, he wore both hats as the President of CBS Sports and CBS News, so who better to have at the helm than Sean McManus and I thought it was a masterful stroke to have CBS News come on the air with the gravitas of (CBS Evening News anchorman) Scott Pelley set the stage and then at the game site to have (CBS This Morning co-host) Norah O’Donnell, who had done an interview with Roger Goodell setting the stage.
I do understand that while the game is the thing, there are times and this was one of those, where all of the off-the-field activity was going to impact what happened on the field so it was a proper blending and quite frankly, I thought it was marvelous the way it was pulled off. I was psyched to be a part of that because you get to utilize everything of what you have been trained to do as a broadcaster to deal with the seriousness of the issue that we were dealing with, to paint a picture for America that we always assume that you’ve got casual eyes coming to the set so you have to be careful to pain that elementary understanding of what it was and how it was going to impact or how it had already impacted what you’re about to see there.
It was a thrill for me.
AA: You did a commentary which you delivered during the pregame on domestic violence and you also did a commentary after the Jovan Belcher murder-suicide. Both were quite very serious and quite thought-provoking. What was it about those issues that led you to write them?
JB: They were serious issues and they should have been thought-provoking for all of us. Too often we have a tendency to focus only on the game to the exclusion of everything else. But there are those rare times when that which there are about to watch and witness on TV in terms of the game needs to be thought about in a bigger context.
I had delivered fundamentally the same commentary after the Jovan Belcher-Kassandra Perkins incident and I’m certainly mindful to mention her name because she was a victim in all this as well too and often times in society people tend to focus on the higher visible person only.
It was a collaborative effort because as we were tweaking the commentary to be appropriate for this debut, this inaugural show of ours, fundamentally everything was the same, but we wanted to bring it current and so I got some nice input from my colleagues and in tweaking the commentary. I felt very comfortable with it because it needed to be said. It was serious.
AA: In regards to the NFL Today, you have two new analysts, Tony Gonzalez and Bart Scott. What is it like having to break in new people to the show after being comfortable with a cast you had been with for several years?
JB: I reflect to when I broke into the business some 250 years ago (laughter). I had veteran announcers who made it easy for me, who welcomed me into the role and who gave me a comfort level and I’ve tried to always remember to do the same with them.
AA: It’s the 20th anniversary of the launch of Fox NFL Sunday which you hosted. What was it like to launch something totally new, leaving CBS which had lost the NFL and go to Fox and set a template for pregame shows going forward?
JB: I’m completely honest about this. Fox raised the bar significantly in terms of what they did. (Then-Fox Sports President) David Hill captured lightning in a bottle in terms of the talent he pulled together there and I think the best way to synopsize that is that it piqued all of our competitive juices because the critics were saying “wait a minute, what are they going to do? What do they know about doing football? They’ve never done it before. They call themselves Fox Sports and they only have one sport” We should have called ourselves as John Madden used to say, “Fox Sport.”
People were asking “Who’s going to host the show, is it going to be Bart Simpson?” I took that very personally. The point was we were all ex-athletes, all extremely excited and competitive to go out and show the world that we could do a good job and actually do it differently than what it had been done previously.
I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and I still maintain a good relationship with those guys, but let me tell you now, over at CBS, my aim is even though they’re all good friends, they have an excellent show and have had it for a long time. That’s stating what is. My competitive juices are also sparked and it’s taking some time and I recognize they have the bigger markets in the NFC and all of that notwithstanding. In the football world you hear the expression “no excuses,” so our aim is to go out and give the viewers the best possible show we can and that falls on me in terms of getting the best of my guys so I can put them in the best possible light. We’re not trying to duplicate what Fox does, but playing to whatever our strengths are, but that experience there at Fox was wonderful and invaluable in setting the tone for me coming back to CBS.
AA: You’ve anchored the CBS Evening News substituting for Scott Pelley. What is it like to anchor the day’s news as opposed to being in the studio for the NFL Today?
JB: You’re looking at the smile on my face as you asked that question.
I learned a long time ago that if you are a good reporter, a good journalist, the mechanics that you would engage and utilize in telling the proper story in the world of sports is the same that you would in the world of entertainment is the same that you would in the world of news.
To be a good interviewer, same mechanics, same methodology if you will, sports, entertainment or news or science. I had a blast doing it. There’s kind of a common thread that I hadn’t thought about. It piqued my competitive juices to want to go out there and do a good job at it.
Steve Friedman who was the executive producer at the Today Show and then the Early Show at CBS and Sean McManus asked me when I first came to CBS would I consider doing the Early Show and doing the NFL Today. And I said I really wanted to focus on doing what (Sean) was expecting of me with the NFL Today before doing news and so I’m very loyal to Sean McManus in that regard because he’s the one who laid the groundwork for me to still to be able to do news now. Sean McManus did that when I came back.
Steve Friedman told me that the reason he went and got Bryant Gumbel to do the Today Show because sports people are accustomed to adjusting to curve balls. Once we get to halftime or the postgame, it’s free flowing, you have to be able to adjust on the fly and so in the world of news, if there’s a breaking news story, you have to be prepared, not uncomfortable, not skittish, about adjusting on the fly so I saw that as a challenge and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a blast and I look forward to doing more.
AA: And you’re also doing some reporting for 60 Minutes as well?
JB: My contract with CBS in general and CBS News in specific allows me to contribute to all of their news programs, 60 Minutes regular, 60 Minutes Sports, Sunday Morning, for the Evening News and for CBS This Morning so that’s in a wonderful position to be in, to be able to contribute stories and I have over 50 appearances between those various platforms, I’m excited about it. And even 48 Hours has approached me about doing something so at this stage of my career, this is exciting to be able to have that kind of creativity and newness, if you will, about doing other things.
We thank James Brown and CBS Sports for arranging the interview and to take some time from his busy schedule to talk with us.