"CBS Sunday Morning," the weekend showcase of news and features expertly honed for somewhat more casual Sunday morning viewing, will transition into1080i this weekend.
The weekend fare will be the third major CBS News program to make the HD leap; "60 Minutes" and "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" transitioned in 2008.
The May 17 inaugural broadcast will feature a taped segment with longtime host Charles Osgood from the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C., as part of the 30 year-old program's annual designs show. The show—whose eclectic program's typical segments include narration-less video segments showing nature settings and other atypical TV fare—will present its first live program in HD from its usual Studio 44 facilities in Manhattan the following Sunday, May 24.
CBS will use half a dozen new Sony HDC-1500 fixed-studio cameras, among other new equipment—but institute some cost-savings by deploying the same control room used for the Couric nightly newscast. That will delay the jump of several other CBS News programs to 1080i (including Sunday morning's "Face the Nation" and "The Early Show" on weekdays) for at least several more months, and probably not until 2010.
