CBS-TV Won’t Put Reagan on the Air After Super Bowl

MIAMI — If President Reagan calls the locker room of the winning Super Bowl team Sunday, his congratulations will be private because CBS won’t put the President on the air, it was reported today.

Ted Shaker, the executive producer of CBS Sports and of the Super Bowl game, told the Miami Herald his network will not try to match NBC’s interview with Reagan during the Fiesta Bowl halftime show Jan. 2.

Then, in a talk with NBC Sports’ Bob Costas, the President reminisced about the start of his own career in sports broadcasting. Questions about politics were strictly forbidden and questions about NBC’s propriety surfaced after the interview.

When CBS last televised the Super Bowl, in 1984 from Tampa, the network not only rigged a telephone hookup with the President but a split-screen TV image as well.