Charlie Carlucci

Charlie Carlucci spent more than 35 years redefining the role of graphics operator for CBS Sports. Although fonts, statistics, colors, and images were at the core of what he did, the key to his success was his ability to be a good listener.

“That was huge,” he says. “Also important was helping the people sitting next to me. I could never let someone sink. I would always help them and let them know that I’ve done this a lot and this is what we should do.”

Those leadership efforts were not lost on CBS Sports management. CBS Sports President David Berson says Carlucci is in a class by himself as a graphics operator: “Among the many things that stood out about Charlie were his incredible sports knowledge, his ability to continuously adapt to and integrate new technology, and a personality that created calm in the most stressful of situations. Charlie worked across nearly every property at CBS Sports — including the Super Bowl, Masters, Final Four, and US Open — and did so at the highest of levels.”

Adds CBS Sports Coordinating Producer Craig Silver, “Charlie was the most skilled operator of his time. He was expert at the technology of the equipment, and he knew and loved sports as well as anybody. But, most of all, he understood people. His expertise mixed with his incredible charisma and humor created an atmosphere for success in the graphics room and helped the members of his team perform at their very best.”

Born in Brooklyn in 1954, Carlucci lived there until he was 14, when his family moved to Wayne, NJ. While he was in high school there, his older brother was hired by one of the area’s cable companies. For Carlucci, his brother’s career in cable TV opened the door to a career in sports production. “During high school, I would work there for him and with him, and that’s my first experience in ‘playing television’; I was covering high school sports and other things for local cable.”

He attended Manhattan College as an English major, wanting to be a sports reporter. But, spending his summers working for WPIX and two winters in the mid ’70s working for Madison Square Garden network, he realized he wanted to work behind the scenes.

Working on professional productions of professional sports teams while in college led to the occasional awkward moment. “I remember telling the media-department professor that I can’t make class next week because I’m doing camera at Shea Stadium,” Carlucci recalls. “I thought he was going to fall off his chair. He goes, What?, and I said, Yeah, I got hired by WPIX. I would go do a Yankee game at night and go to school the next day. That was the beginning.”

It wasn’t long before WPIX hired him permanently, and, in the mid to late ’70s, his goal was to get as much experience as he could. At the time, WPIX was home to the New York Yankees, giving Carlucci (a Yankee fan) a chance to work on Yankees games during some of the most exciting years in franchise history. He was doing everything at WPIX, including learning how to be a technical director as well as operating graphics equipment.

“It was a big thrill for me,” he says of his time working on Yankees broadcasts. “I had a chance to do everything, and it was a great place to work.”

In 1980, an opening for a chyron operator at CBS became available. He learned of the opportunity while working at Yankee Stadium when he heard that someone had turned down the job. “I asked why they turned it down, and it was because there was travel involved. I jumped out of my chair and called my brother, who was at CBS News. I asked him, ‘Who do I talk to? Who do I call?’ And that’s how I got the job and began a 36-year career as a chyron operator.”

In his long career in graphics, Carlucci was part of the amazing developments spurred by technical innovations like the move to Windows, which transformed graphics devices into computer-graphics devices. “I was never a big computer guy,” he notes, “and I’m thinking, Oh, boy, I’m lost; I’m done. But that’s when it totally changed. It was a whole different technology, but the job was still the same.”

That job, and where Carlucci excelled, was not just operating the graphics devices and making them “jump and sing” but rather anticipating and understanding what graphics are most important given the action on the field of play. “A lot of operators would have no clue what the yardage to go was on third down, and that’s what I did best,” he adds. “I would teach the people next to me, who just got out of college, how to listen to six people at the same time and put up graphics that made sense. But it was such a different process back then, it was much more manual, and I had to be able to anticipate what was going to happen.”

Joining CBS Sports, Carlucci found himself working on the NFL, a game that featured Hall of Famer sportscasters Pat Summerall and John Madden. “Madden was very stats-oriented,” he recalls. “We would have four or five stats people keeping track of things. It was all manual; there was no computer interface. And you had to build graphics and fill in numbers quickly because it was live TV. There was no ‘let’s try it again.’”

Although it has gotten a lot easier, with data and stats flowing directly into the graphics engines, he notes, there is still a need to understand storytelling. “You have to think what plays here; you can’t just throw anything up on the screen. After a while, I kind of gained the respect of the producers as I would always be selling graphics. Eventually, they would trust me, and that made everybody’s job a little easier.”

For Carlucci and other graphics professionals, it is all about having a “good font,” which was a key statistic or a full-page graphic that had some important information. “We would work about eight or 10 hours on Saturday building those graphics as different producers would ask for certain things. Then it was about listening and finding the right time for a graphic to make air. You might build 100 graphics, and only four of them would make air, but those four would be the right ones.”

As for favorite moments and events, Carlucci notes that the first Super Bowl he ever worked on was made extra special because it was 1987 and the New York Giants were playing the Denver Broncos. “I never got nervous on big shows like that, but I walked outside at the Rose Bowl and saw thousands upon thousands of people coming into the stadium. and I said, ‘Oh, this is big time.’”

He worked 35 Masters in a row, starting when he was 26 and had been with CBS Sports only eight months. Though a newbie, he found himself on the front row for events like Jack Nicklaus winning his sixth Masters and Tiger Woods winning his first.

He also worked on tennis, car racing, boxing, and just about everything else. His favorite event by far is March Madness (even though he didn’t always get to work it because it conflicted with the Masters). “My favorite event to cover was March Madness and the Final Four,” he says. “I would see highlights from those big college games and be able to say I was there for it. I loved that it was two hours and then it was over.”

Although Carlucci spent plenty of time working for CBS Sports, there was a glitch when FOX took over the NFL’s NFC package from CBS in 1993. FOX rented the CBS mobile unit and, with it, the technicians who worked on the NFL A game. “It was the same crew, and, besides the scorebug, which debuted that year for those games, it was the same as the CBS games,” he recalls. “That was a great season, but it was sad at the end saying, This is it. They did offer some of us to come work for FOX, but I turned it down because, at CBS, I knew I would be busy all year. FOX didn’t have a full year of sports on the schedule.”

Ken Aagaard, chairman, Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame, and former EVP, operations and production services, CBS, notes that, when he arrived at CBS Sports in the late 1990s, he was told that there was only one graphics guru and that was Carlucci. “As I discovered very quickly,” he recalls, Charlie Carlucci was a lot more than just about graphics to CBS Sports. He was the heart and soul of the crew, and his sense of humor and quick wit were second to none. Plus, Charlie could work with any crew and on any sport. As graphic technology advanced, so did Charlie, helping CBS Sports evolve and improve the overall look.”

As for mentors, Carlucci cites Bruno Fucci, an old-time chyron operator who taught him a lot as they figured out how to get the latest graphics gear working for golf broadcasts. “He was really sharp. We did two or three seasons together. He was the main influence technical-wise.”

Over the years, he saw a lot of technical innovation. Graphics was one of the first technical areas to make the leap to computers, taking in data, producing timelier graphics, and, of course, moving to HD. One of the most memorable examples was the day the graphics equipment and the graphics crew could fit inside the main production truck. “When I started,” Carlucci points out, “the graphics team and equipment were always in a house trailer or the hallway or even the locker room — anywhere but in a TV truck. We would have to run cables every week to connect the chyrons, which were in big metal containers that had to be wheeled in. It wasn’t until the late ’90s that we would get to work in the B truck.”

Carlucci, retired since 2016, and his wife spend their days on the northern part of the Jersey shore near Sandy Hook, enjoying friends, family, and the shore.

He may no longer be at CBS Sports, but his impact on sports production will be felt for decades to come at CBS Sports and across the industry. “He has mentored countless others at the beginning of their careers, including many of today’s lead producers and directors,” says Berson. “Every broadcast associate knew that, if Charlie was on your crew, he was going to make you and the show better. Charlie is incredibly deserving of this Hall of Fame honor, and we could not be prouder of him.”

CBS Sports SVP, Remote Production, Steve Karasik describes Carlucci as the greatest graphics operator in the history of sports television, citing his combination of technical expertise, great passion and understanding of sports, and an amazing sense of humor. “He never got frazzled, always kept the CBS graphics room calm in the most pressure-filled situations and mentored some of the top production people in sports television today at the start of their careers. Whether it was a Super Bowl, the Masters, the US Open Tennis Championship, or the Final Four, Charlie was always leading the way in the graphics room.”

For Carlucci, it is the difference that he made in people’s careers that he holds most dear: “I was successful and at the top of my game for a long time, working alongside the different A crews. That is what I am most proud of: that people still enjoyed working with me and were happy to have me help them and make a part of the show better. I’ve seen a lot of people get taken off the road when their abilities slowed down. Instead of having that, I just said, ‘I’ve had enough.’ I was happy that I went out mostly on top.”