CBS Golf lead producer Sellers Shy spends most of his life as a happy intermediary.
Over his left shoulder is golf television, broadly speaking. The announcers, executives, tours and players, each of whom looks to Shy to wrangle the overwhelming challenge of putting golf on television with precision and care and grace.
And over his right shoulder? Well, that’s you — the viewing audience — who assign Shy the responsibility of showing golf television in a way that feels at once highly purposeful and entirely effortless.
Shy and his NBC counterpart Tommy Roy sit at the center of this unholy (and at times oppositional) Venn diagram, two men in middle age expected to operate with the boundless energy of professional marathoners. Yes, they are armed with a small army of fellow TV professionals to keep the trains on time, but no, that is not a cure-all.
The best, and at times only, weapon at their disposal just so happens to be television’s hardest feat: innovation. If the product is improving, or at the very least changing, it is easier for the watchers and the watched to feel as though they are getting what they need. But how do you change a product that has already been through 60 some-odd iterations on a healthy but stagnant budget? That’s the question I posed to Shy during CBS’s season-opening press call earlier this week.
CBS’s broadcast returns to golf again on Friday at the Farmers Insurance Open, Shy’s fourth campaign as lead producer since taking over the role from his embattled predecessor, Lance Barrow. Innovation has been at the center of his producing ethos, leading to experiments that have become golf TV mainstays like the constant leaderboard. But what’s on the docket for 2025? Here are 7 changes you can expect to see throughout the season.
7 changes to CBS Golf in 2025
1. New (full-time) leadership
The biggest change to CBS telecasts in 2025 actually arrived back in May of ’24, when David Berson succeeded longtime CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus at the helm of the network. Berson, a CBS lifer who came over from ESPN to serve as McManus’ No. 2, enters his first full season of golf coverage at a time of upheaval on the PGA Tour, which lost nearly one-fifth of its viewing audience in 2024. On the morning we spoke, Berson spoke effusively in support of Justin Thomas’ letter to PGA Tour membership calling for, among other things, expanded access for broadcasters.
“We loved what we read,” Berson told GOLF.com. “We’re fans of it. We’ve been pushing for it for a long time. We love that JT is willing to put his neck out there and take a leadership position.”
2. Drone tracer expansion
One big tweak that arrived midway through the 2024 season were “drone tracers,” a visual expansion that provided CBS the opportunity to show shot tracers on moving camera shots. Those tracers were popular with fans, who enjoyed the three-dimensional glimpse at a player’s line, angle and shot. They will be expanded in 2025 both in presence and execution, with a second drone being deployed specifically for tracing and data tacking technology throughout the West Coast Swing.
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