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Basketball FREAK?!

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March Madness is a time of great success along with upsetting, shocking defeats.  The tournament lasts a month long that will determine the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball National Championship team.  So why did it take millions of viewers missing parts of games for decades before the networks realized we ALL want to watch ALL the games?  Well, 2011 is the year!! 

 One network, CBS, and three Turner cable channels, TBS, TNT and truTv will each individually broadcast different Division I Men’s Basketball matches from start to finish so that collectively they will show all the games. Not only are you able to watch one game, you are able to view the continuous scores of all the other games on the other networks from the top of your tv screen so you don’t miss a beat! Viewers now have the ability to flip between channels to the most exciting matches. This brings more coverage to the networks while broadening the audience of viewers.  Not everyone watches basketball, but during March Madness, many more do because of the upbeat competition of the tournament.  These four channels allow all the viewers to keep track of their bracket and join in on the fun!

So far all channels collectively have done an excellent job of keeping fans up to date with coverage and news on the tournament before and after each game. A team of commentators led by Greg Gumbel have kept the conversation going for every match up. The partnership that CBS and Turner has created where the feel and look of each station’s broadcast, including the same graphics and commentators, has convincingly made viewers feel like they are watching the same tournament. As opposed to the tournament being broken down among four different stations with their individual interpretation of how it should look. This ideal broadcast is what March Madness fans have been craving for years.

CBS has owned the rights to March Madness since 1982 and since all that time CBS controlled what games were shown. So in a bold move for making the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament available for all basketball freaks and bracket-fillers, CBS signed a 14 year deal with Time Warner’s Turner cable company for $10.8 billion to own the rights to the tournament. In doing so CBS and Turner have become each a customer-centric organization. They saw what the fans wanted and delivered. “It’s a better programming option for the viewer at home and the basketball fan,” said CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus. “More work on his or her part to find the game, but they get to decide what game they want to watch. In the past, I think we did a very good job of moving around, but it was our [CBS] decision.” Since CBS and Turner have become customer focused they see the importance for the NCAA tournament to be controlled by the viewers, and to allow the Madness of March to be experienced by the fans. 

The next set of tournament games are this Thursday and Friday, March 24th and 25th, which showcase the remaining Sweet Sixteen. Check www.ncaa.com for a live bracket of the remaining teams and teams whose road to victory has ended.

-Lauren DeHart & JC Salter

Comments

3 responses to “Basketball FREAK?!”

  1. Kristen Barnhardt Avatar
    Kristen Barnhardt

    I recently became a fan of college basketball for the NCAA Tournament Bracket Challenge to see whether or not I could beat a group of sports fanatic guys. As of right now I sit at number 4 out of 36, and just keep in mind that I haven’t kept up with college basketball this season or any in the past years. By doing this bracket challenge, I have become so eager to see scores and games during other games’ commercials. I know how the years have been before so I have to say how amazing it is to keep all the scores of other games updated at the top of the screen of the game you are watching. It has become far more convenient and it also helps by telling the viewer what channels each game is on. The same format on each channel makes it very easy on the sports fan. By selling the rights to the tournament, CBS made a great decision and made many basketball fans very happy…especially the ones with brackets.

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  2. Nick Kusko Avatar
    Nick Kusko

    I have followed the NCAA tournament for a number of years now, and I must agree that haviing the four channels has made it much more enjoyable to follow. As you guys stated, the viewer can watch the game of their choice opposed to the one CBS decides to put on (which is usually the game that is regional). I remember in past years, you would have to sit through a 30-point Duke blow out in North Carolina, while missing a nail biter going on somewhere else in the nation. As much as Duke fans probably love watching their team beat up on an inferior team, other basketball fans would rather enjoy the entire tournament experience. The only drawback this year is we do not have truTV here on campus. Despite never hearing of this channel before in my life, a large number of games that have had astonishing finishes have been on there. It is nice how the money involved with the tournament (which is A LOT) is being distributed through more sources. This has probably been the highest ratings truTV has even seen (or will see again until March rolls around again).

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  3. John Ernstes Avatar
    John Ernstes

    I could not agree to a fuller extent with this post, and it excites me greatly to know that there are other people out there who feel the same way about having every game of the tournament broadcasted live. This idea to televise all the games over four different channels is one of the best things to happen to college basketball. In the past, only one game was televised at a time, with the scores of the other games being played at the top of the screen and occasional live look-ins to these games. Now that we are able to watch all the games, we don’t have to settle with watching a game we dont really care about and following the games we really want to see by the score at the top of the screen. If we are watching our favorite game and the game between two teams we don’t really care about is about to end, we can just flip to the other station, watch the hopefully exciting conclusion to that game, and then resume watching the game we really care about. With this new set up, for the first and second round games there was constantly an NCAA tournament game on tv from 12:30 in the afternoon to 12:30 at night. Nothing could be more perfect for college basketball fans.

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