35 Facts About CBS

CBS Broadcasting, Inc, an abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System and commonly shortened to CBS, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network.

CBS ventured and expanded its horizons through television starting in the 1940s, spinning-off its broadcast syndication division Viacom to a separate company in 1971.

In 2000, CBS came under the control of the original incarnation of Viacom, which was formed as a spin-off of CBS in 1971.

CBS Corporation was controlled by Sumner Redstone through National Amusements, which controlled the second incarnation of Viacom until December 4,2019, when the two separated companies agreed to re-merge to become ViacomCBS.

CBS operated the CBS Radio network until 2017, when it sold its radio division to Entercom.

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CBS was ranked 197th on the 2018 Fortune 500 of the largest American corporations by revenue.

CBS is the only commercial broadcast network that continues to broadcast daytime game shows.

From 1971 to 1986, CBS News produced a series of one-minute segments titled In the News, which aired between other Saturday morning programs.

In 1997, CBS premiered Wheel 2000, a children's version of the syndicated game show Wheel of Fortune which aired simultaneously on the Game Show Network.

In September 1998, CBS began contracting the time period out to other companies to provide programming and material for its Saturday morning schedule.

In March 2006, CBS entered into a three-year agreement with DIC Entertainment, which was acquired later that year by the Cookie Jar Group, to program the Saturday morning time slot as part of a deal that included distribution of select tape-delayed Formula One auto races.

On July 24,2013, CBS entered into an agreement with Litton Entertainment, which already programmed a syndicated Saturday morning block exclusive to ABC stations and would later produce a block for CBS sister network The CW that would debut the following year, to launch a new Saturday morning block featuring live-action reality-based lifestyle, wildlife, and sports series.

CBS was the original broadcast network home of the animated primetime holiday specials based on the Peanuts comic strip, beginning with A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965.

CBS aired several primetime animated specials based on the works of Dr Seuss, beginning with How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 1966, as well as several specials based on the Garfield comic strip during the 1980s.

CBS was responsible for airing the series of Young People's Concerts, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

CBS was the original broadcast home for the primetime specials produced by the National Geographic Society.

CBS aired the special, Elvis in Concert, on October 3,1977, nearly two months after Presley's death in his Graceland mansion on August 16.

Since their inception in 1978, CBS has been the sole broadcaster of The Kennedy Center Honors, a two-hour performing arts tribute typically taped and edited in December for later broadcast during the holiday season.

CBS has 15 owned-and-operated stations, and current and pending affiliation agreements with 228 additional television stations encompassing 51 states, the District of Columbia, two US possessions, Bermuda and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

CBS maintains affiliations with low-power stations in a few markets, such as Harrisonburg, Virginia, Palm Springs, California and Parkersburg, West Virginia.

CBS maintains a sizeable number of subchannel-only affiliations, the majority of which are with stations in cities located outside of the 50 largest Nielsen-designated markets; the largest CBS subchannel affiliate by market size is KOGG in Wailuku, Hawaii, which serves as a repeater of Honolulu affiliate KGMB.

CBS provides video on demand access for delayed viewing of the network's programming through various means, including via its website at CBS.

CBS historically used a specially-commissioned variant of Didot, a close relative to Bodoni, as its corporate font until 2021.

CBS has developed several notable image campaigns, and several of the network's most well-known slogans were introduced in the 1980s.

From 1983 to 1986, CBS featured a campaign based on the slogan "We've Got the Touch".

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However, it was this season in which CBS saw its ratings freefall, the deepest in the network's history.

The high-energy promo song and the campaign's practices saw many customized variations by all of CBS's owned-and-operated stations and affiliates, which participated in the campaign per a network mandate.

In October 2020, CBS announced that it will begin to employ a more unified branding between the network and its divisions to strengthen brand awareness across platforms.

In Bermuda, CBS maintains an affiliation with Hamilton-based ZBM-TV, locally owned by Bermuda Broadcasting Company.

CBS programming is available in Mexico through affiliates in markets located within proximity to the Mexico–United States border, whose signals are readily receivable over-the-air in border areas of northern Mexico.

The cost of maintaining program supply agreements with CBS and 21st Century Fox was a major factor in the network's unprofitability during the mid-2010s.

CBS Corporation chose to acquire the network, completing the transaction in November 2017.

In India, CBS maintained a brand licensing agreement with Reliance Broadcast Network Ltd.

On September 8,2004, less than two months before the Presidential election in which he defeated Democratic candidate John Kerry, CBS aired a controversial episode of 60 Minutes Wednesday, which questioned then-President George W Bush's service in the Air National Guard in 1972 and 1973.

In July 2018, an article by Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker claimed that thirty "current and former CBS employees described harassment, gender discrimination, or retaliation" at CBS and six women accused Les Moonves of harassment and intimidation.