CBS Ex-Pres on Life After the Big Job: 'You Don't Get to Choose Your Own Exit'
Kelly Kahl opens up about his journey that led him to produce a doc about the Milwaukee Brewers' 1982 World Series, a childhood obsession
Lesley Goldberg reports from L.A. She recently wrote about the rise of open writing assignments (and scooped the name of the showrunner for the second season of Netflix’s The Perfect Couple) and about the loss of The CW as a crucial training ground for writers.
Kelly Kahl is living his best life.
After a nearly three-decade career at CBS, including six years as its president of entertainment, Kahl has spent the past few years focusing on his favorite childhood baseball team with the documentary Just a Bit Outside: The Story of the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers. The two-hour doc, which he produced for under $1 million alongside longtime friend and Cannonball Productions partner Sean Hanish, started with two guys swapping stories over golf as former Brewers center fielder Gorman Thomas queried Kahl about one of his favorite shows: CBS’ NCIS.
For Kahl, the move to the creative side came naturally after working with showrunners behind such monster hits as CSI and The Good Wife as well as executives like Nina Tassler. He rose through the ranks at CBS after his move from Warner Bros. TV to the Tiffany net’s scheduling department. In fact, it was Kahl’s scheduling prowess that helped take CBS from No. 3 to No. 1 in the 2000s when he moved hits like Survivor and CSI to Thursdays as the network challenged, and eventually defeated, NBC’s former Must-See TV lineup. In the years before his exit, Kahl — who is a partner in Hermosa Beach sports bar The Underground (a destination for Packers fans, naturally) — helped deliver hits including FBI, Ghosts and Fire Country.
Just a Bit Outside, which Kahl and Hanish self-financed, doesn’t feature a typical Hollywood ending. There’s no walk-off win in the bottom of the ninth after Tom Berenger’s Jake stuns with a called shot bunt (for the non-obsessives, that’s from Major League). Instead, Just a Bit Outside tells a story that Kahl describes as “a love letter” to the team and to Milwaukee after the scrappy Brewers stunned the baseball world and made it to their first-ever World Series, where they fell to the St. Louis Cardinals. It was a narrative that electrified the city and kids like Kahl who grew up in Wisconsin at a time when the economy was brutal for manufacturing centers in the Midwest.
“Sean and I joke about, as much as it ripped our hearts out as 15-year-old kids, the fact that they lost made this a much more interesting project. If they win, it’s great, but it’s just that it’s every sports doc ever,” says Kahl, 58. “We didn’t remember the recession. My grandfather worked at one of those factories that’s mentioned early in the piece that was closed. The team lifted up the city and then the city lifted up the team.”
The doc features interviews — conducted by Kahl and Hanish — with Major League Baseball Hall of Famers Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Ted Simmons and the late Bob Uecker in one of his last extensive sitdowns before the legendary broadcaster passed away in January. “That ’82 season, it was chaotic!” Uecker recalls in the film. “The fans were fired up, it was really fun.” The Brewers were so impressed with the end result that the team asked Kahl and the Outside crew to produce videos for Uecker’s upcoming memorial. “It’s a massive honor,” Kahl says of the opportunity, which came after Just a Bit Outside’s Wisconsin screening window grew from two weeks to two months late last year on the strength of its popularity with audiences.
On that note, Roku — already home to some Sunday Major League Baseball games — has licensed Just a Bit Outside and will begin an exclusive streaming window for the doc on April 11 (through June 30). Kahl hopes his story of the blue-collar baseball team that ignited a city at its lowest point will resonate beyond baseball fans. “The Brewers have a rich history filled with incredible stories, and we’re honored to bring fans an in-depth look at one of the most memorable seasons in baseball,” says David Eilenberg, head of content at Roku Media, in a statement to The Ankler. It’s all part of delivering “more premium sports content to our programming lineup,” he adds.
Kahl sat down with me for his first industry interview (condensed and edited here) since exiting CBS in late 2022 — he shared his passion for this project, his undying love of broadcast television and his secrets for succeeding at life and work even after you lose the Big Job. Read our wide-ranging QA to learn:
What it felt like to be pushed out of CBS: “I knew when I took that position that that’s the way it ended”
What made Kahl take on the Brewers doc as his first post-CBS project
What’s different about the 1982 Brewers from any MLB team today, and why that made for a compelling narrative
How his career as an exec played into his creative production work on the doc
How two “Hollywood guys” earned the trust of skeptical MLB vets
Why Kahl put his own money into the film
How industry pals helped him pull it off: “The relationships you develop over many years really pay off in the end”
Why he’ll “always root for broadcast” and his argument for its unique value
His view on MLB’s challenges in replacing the regional sports network model
How baseball’s struggles are a microcosm for media’s: “Where do I find my shows? Where do I find my games?”
His next moves and hopes for “another opportunity to jump back in” to TV
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