During the games, officials asked Tony Verna, one of the members of the production staff, if it could use its videotape equipment to determine whether or not a slalom skier missed a gate.

Verna then returned to CBS headquarters in New York City and developed the first instant replay system, which debuted at the Army–Navy football game in 1963.

[4] Because communications satellites, which would have provided direct transmissions between the United States and Italy, were not yet available, production staff members fed footage from Rome to London, re-recorded it on tape there, and then the tapes were flown to CBS headquarters in New York (or a mobile unit parked at Idelwild Airport in New York, to lessen the time that transporting videotapes into the city would take) for later telecast.

Jim McKay, then a relatively unknown radio and television personality, was the host, anchoring not from Rome, but from the CBS studios in New York City.

The 1994 Games in Lillehammer, Norway saw the highest nighttime ratings in the history of American Olympic telecasts, as a result of the scandal in which associates of figure skater Tonya Harding attacked Nancy Kerrigan and the media frenzy that followed.

Also contributing to the huge ratings in 1994 were a surprise gold medal by American skier Tommy Moe, as well as Dan Jansen's speed skating gold medal win, and, on the final morning (Eastern Time) of the Games, a dramatic championship game in men's hockey between Sweden and Canada, won by Sweden in a shootout.

The affiliation deal between CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting resulted in WBAL-TV, WHDH and WCAU switching to NBC in 1995, one year before those stations aired the 1996 games.