Filed under: NCAA Tournament, Sports Business and Media
CBS and Turner Thursday announced a big piece of the road map by which they will combine to carry next month's NCAA men's basketball tournament, and it is a messy one. For Mike Aresco, CBS Sports' executive vice president for programming, what is an annual challenge -- namely getting the March Madness to the right homes at the right time -- has been made even more, well, challenging, by the presence of three more channels.
But it should be fun. Shouldn't it?
"I think this will be one of those deals where we'll look back on it and say, 'Gee, wasn't that fun?' It might not be fun while we're doing it," said Aresco, laughing.
As previously announced, CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV will air each of the 67 games nationally, from the new four play-in games to the Final Four and national championship match, across the platforms as national games. That means you won't have to hunt for any games or buy a Direct TV package to see every game of the tournament.
That's the easy part. What will be tricky is the execution of the plan, large portions of which were unveiled Thursday.
The process begins with "The First Four," the newly created quartet of first round games, that will air on Tuesday and Wednesday March 15 and 16, starting at 6:30 p.m. with the nightcap at 9 p.m each night on TruTV. Though the games will feel for many much like the play-in games, CBS and Turner will gloss them up by having its Final Four crew of Jim Nantz, Clark Kellogg and Turner NBA analyst Steve Kerr do the Tuesday doubleheader with the ever excitable Gus Johnson and Len Elmore working the Wednesday games.
"We're conscious with the NCAA of having those Tuesday-Wednesday games be perceived as part of the tournament, which they are," said Aresco
From there, things get interesting. The start times of the Thursday and Friday games, now officially known as the second round, will be staggered in such a way so that viewers will be able to see more of the contests, since they'll be scattered between the four channels.
As recently as last year, when CBS had all the games, start times would be delayed by 5-15 minutes during the windows. Now, there will be enough of a delay so that there will be "wall to wall basketball from noon to midnight," Aresco said.
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