CBS College Cuts Staff by a Quarter

By Carolyn Braff
On Thursday, CBS College Sports Network made some big staffing changes. Laying off nearly one-quarter of its staff, the network is shifting its resources from studio programming — which is shot in standard-definition — to event coverage, which the network hopes to do more of in HD.
Studio programming will continue through early December, the end of college football’s regular season, and then go off the air until the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in March, when studio shows will resume for the duration of the tournament.
“We’ve learned that live game coverage and HD production are the real value of this network,” EVP Steve Herbst said in a statement. “This is absolutely not a retreat. I know our friends at ESPNU have also ramped up their high-def programming.”
CBS
College’s
game-day football programming for the remainder of the season features matchups from Conference
USA, the Mountain West Conference,
Division II, the U.S. Naval Academy, and high schools. The early-season rise of
East
Carolina
University,
a member of Conference
USA,
to No. 15 in the national polls brought a new wave of viewers to the network, but ECU has lost its last three games and dropped its national following.
CBS College Sports Network currently counts approximately 25 million subscribers.