Keith Cossrow, a 1993 Mt. Lebanon High School grad who’s vice president and head of content at NFL Films, said getting the Steelers on HBO’s long-running NFL docuseries “Hard Knocks” (9 tonight, HBO and Max) was a matter of finding the right format.

In the past, “Hard Knocks” has done seasons devoted to a single team. This in-season version of the series follows the four NFL teams of the AFC North.

“We’ve always wanted to (follow the Steelers), but the opportunity — it was never quite the right moment,” Cossrow said in a Zoom interview Monday. “Coach Tomlin was pretty vocal in his desire to not appear on the show for a long time. You try to respect that. At the same time, the idea is everybody’s going to take a turn at some point doing one of these.”

Cossrow, who previously directed the 2022 documentary film “Terry Bradshaw: Going Deep,” said this season, titled “Hard Knocks: In Season with the AFC North,” by virtue of following multiple teams, took the onus off any one of the teams featured.

“I think Coach Tomlin has said as much in his public comments about the show, that we’re all in the same boat, and that feels more fair right now,” said Cossrow, who thinks “Hard Knocks” helps viewers understand the NFL from the inside. “These shows deepen the connection we have to players, to coaches. More than anything, you see how hard these guys work, how committed they are, the way they work together in a really high-stakes job where there’s jobs on the line all the time. I think you can’t help when you watch these shows but gain respect for the people who are in these positions. You’re a lot less likely to call the local sports talk (radio) show and scream and yell to fire someone on a Monday morning after you watch the show.”

For this in-season edition of “Hard Knocks,” cameras only began rolling in late November.

“(Tonight’s) episode is what happened last week,” Cossrow said. “There’s some catching up and some backstory and some exposition up top, but ‘Hard Knocks’ is a movie this week about this week.”

Directors Terrell Riley, a “Hard Knocks” veteran, and Brandon Bell, a former NFL player, are embedded with the Steelers in Pittsburgh.

“If you’ve been around the (Steelers) facility, you see the couple trailers out in the parking lot,” Cossrow said. “We try to keep the footprint as small as we can.”

To that end, “Hard Knocks” installed robotic cameras in Steelers’ meeting rooms devoted to quarterbacks, defense, wide receivers, etc.

“Most of the position rooms have one, two or three cameras in them that are operated by our team out in the trailer,” Cossrow said. “These cameras can zoom and pan. There are microphones in those meeting rooms so we can capture what happens in those meetings without having to walk in there with boom mics and a camera crew.”

Teams do get an opportunity to screen footage shot in their facilities before it airs to guard against revealing competitive, strategic secrets that would put a team at a disadvantage on the field.

In addition, Cossrow said, there are internal dynamics producers can’t possibly know about, so teams are given the opportunity to look at footage and guard against anything that could damage dynamics inside the building “or create a situation for them that’s more difficult outside the building. But in terms of creative control, everything that the show is about is determined here at NFL Films.”

As one might expect, Cossrow confirmed the first episode has scenes focused on brothers Cam and Connor Heyward.

“We very much wanted to start with Cam, and obviously the Heyward story is one that everyone in Pittsburgh is familiar with,” Cossrow said, “but to see Cam and Connor together (at home) on Thanksgiving, we thought, would be a meaningful moment.”

Beyond that, Cossrow said “Hard Knocks” will take viewers “inside the Steelers’ facility in ways that we have never been. Even for all of us back here, it’s really been extraordinary just to see this first glimpse of how Coach Tomlin, the entire staff and all of the players on the Steelers go about their business and carry on that culture of what is one of the great organizations in all of sports.”

Renewed

Season 2 renewals announced late last month went to Peacock’s “Day of the Jackal,” HBO’s “It’s Florida, Man” and CNN’s “Have I Got News for You.”

MGM+ will bring back sci-fi/horror series “From” for a fourth season in 2026.

NBC ordered five more episodes of freshman comedy “Happy’s Place” bringing its first-season episode total to 18 (aka the new 22).

Channel surfing

Pittsburgh native Michael Keaton’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” streams on Max beginning Friday. … Paul Mescal hosts “Saturday Night Live” on Saturday with musical guest Shaboozey; Chris Rock hosts Dec. 14 with Gracie Abrams; Martin Short hosts Dec. 21 with Hozier. … The final episode of CBS daytime chatfest “The Talk” airs at 2 p.m. Dec. 20 on KDKA-TV; CBS has not announced what will air in the time period between Dec. 23 and the debut of new daytime soap “Beyond the Gates” on Feb. 24. … Norah O’Donnell’s last day as “CBS Evening News” anchor will be Jan. 24. … “The Way Home” will relocate from cable’s Hallmark Channel to subscription streaming service Hallmark+ for its third season, premiering Jan. 2. … Actor Courtney B. Vance will assume the role of Zeus in Season 2 of Disney+ series “Percy Jackson” following the death of Season 1 star Lance Riddick.

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