What’s Next for Tony Romo and CBS?

John Ourand (0:01)

The thing about America is that they love a comeback, and somebody like Tony Romo, who has admitted his faults, he's admitted that he has a problem, he talked about the origins of that problem. I mean, the steps are being made for the type of comeback.

Peter Hamby (0:20)

Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Puck's podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby. It's Wednesday, October 7th. Today I'm joined by John Ourand, who breaks down Tony Romo's exit from the CBS NFL booth after his DUI this summer, and what a broadcaster of his stature and fame does next in the sports media world.

John also tells me about the In the Arena conference he hosted in New York, and his conversations with NCAA Commissioner Charlie Baker and SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey about the challenges facing college sports. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.

Happy Wednesday, everybody, and welcome to The Powers That Be. I'm in New York City for some Puck meetings, and I'm joined today by my colleague John Ourand. We're going to talk about Tony Romo getting the boot from CBS after his much publicized DUI and what's next for the CBS NFL broadcast booth. John is also going to give me a readout of his In the Arena conference, a sports media confab that John hosted, interviewed some heavy hitters, Adam Silver, Greg Sankey from the SEC and others. He'll give me some news and notes and headlines from that conference. I had some friends show up. Everyone loves John. But first, John, we got to talk about Tony Romo. The news broke a few days ago before the weekend, before the CBS broadcast this weekend. He's out. He's no longer going to be doing color from the booth for NFL games for CBS. We've talked a little bit over the years, John, about how Romo's, I don't want to say talents, but it felt like he was really good for a minute. Then he stopped doing his homework, and then the CBS haunches tried to tell him, you got to do a little bit better here. How much was this exit related to the natural trajectory of them trying to move on from him anyway, and find a new generation color guy for their signature games? How much of it was directly related to the DUI and goofy video of said DUI that dropped over the summer?

John Ourand (2:49)

Everything about this is, the die was cast the second that video came to light, and if Tony Romo was still considered one of the top tier NFL analysts, CBS easily could have overlooked this. Tony Romo though, he was signed to an $18 million deal several years ago.

It was going into when ESPN was trying to remake It's Booth, and had feelers out for Romo as well. CBS wanted to keep him there because he was a great young talent. He used to predict plays. He had this infectious enthusiasm that hard-core fans didn't mind, and the people that weren't generally fans really gravitated to. And over the years, it just, the act kind of wore thin a little bit.

It really felt to me like, you know, a TV series that after a couple of seasons, you know, the ratings stopped coming in. The ratings were still up because people still watch. But when this happened, this was really an opportunity for CBS to move on from it. And the big question is, because he had that big contract, is that CBS was on the hook for $72 million for the rest of the contract. And the question is, where did they net out on that? Because you know, there was some sort of negotiation to where Tony Romo was going to say, okay, I'm going to leave. And CBS was going to say, you know, fine, you have to go. And that's still the story to be told, you know, that's out there. And that'll come out at some point, I'm sure.

Peter Hamby (4:29)

Well, now that Paramount Warner Brothers, which owns CBS, is now Skydance, and they're looking for synergies and cost cutting, I'm sure that will be a big question. But yeah, it doesn't sound like they'll be able to just zero out his contract unless, you know, they can find some loophole there where a DUI would be.

John Ourand (4:46)

Yeah, I can't, it's unfathomable to be that they would zero it out. And you could see also, CBS already made steps to move forward without Tony Romo. JJ. Watt is in the top booth and they have a pretty deep bench of analysts already at CBS.