JPhillips
03-11-2003, 11:21 PM
I'm actually fairly impressed with CBS's decision here, but it has to scare the hell out of them. They will lose millions of dollars switching the games to cable.
Sorry this is so long, but it requires a registration at NYTimes and I know some will not want to do that.
Tournament Viewers May Miss Out if There's War
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
[C] BS Sports' contingency plan for broadcasting the N.C.A.A. Division I men's basketball tournament if the country goes to war includes shifting parts of the event to cable channels that, like CBS, are also owned by Viacom.
If CBS is forced to drastically reorganize its broadcasts of the tournament for a day or more, it could mean that a powerhouse team like Arizona would pre-empt "A-Team" reruns on TNN, Kentucky would replace "The Wild Thornberrys" on Nickelodeon and Kansas would take temporary hold of the "Gilligan's Island" slot on TV Land.
In a war, urgent coverage from CBS News would take precedence over the tournament, which the Viacom-owned network is paying $6 billion to televise through 2013. There is no way to be certain if CBS would pre-empt the tournament for no more than one or two days, then follow up in ensuing days with interruptions for special reports.
"We're talking virtually every day about this," Leslie Moonves, the president of CBS, said yesterday. "It depends on how early it happens. Clearly, in the beginning, war coverage is when you'd expect wall-to-wall news coverage."
He said the decision to cut away from full-time war coverage "is all about national sensitivity."
Four days after the Persian Gulf war started in January 1991, the National Football League's conference title games were played; NBC cut away from the Bills-Raiders American Football Conference game for nearly 17 minutes, and CBS left the Giants-49ers National Football Conference game for an extended timeout.
For the past month, CBS has analyzed the options available to it inside its parent company, Viacom, which also owns the TNN, Nickelodeon and TV Land channels. Other Viacom networks, like MTV and VH1 have been ruled out, Sean McManus, the president of CBS Sports, said.
"We're also having talks with various non-Viacom cable companies, to see what their interest is," McManus added. "ESPN is an option." An ESPN spokesman could not confirm any talks or the network's interest.
If the tournament's games move to three or four cable outlets, coverage will be hobbled most critically on the first two days of the tournament, March 20-21, when 16 games are played each day throughout the day. During Round 2, on March 22-23, there are eight games a day.
On its own, CBS showcases the tournament by dividing the nation into multiple regions to serve what are called "areas of natural interest"; the network can single out which of several games being played at once will be seen in each of more than 200 TV markets. A similar type of regionalization is used by CBS for its N.F.L. games on Sundays.
But channels like TNN, Nickelodeon and TV Land cannot regionalize; they send out live national feeds to thousands of cable systems. So viewers in New York, for example, see the same thing subscribers in Tucson or in Raleigh, N.C., see.
"The biggest problem is that in the first two days, four games are going on simultaneously in four different regions," McManus said.
If a continuous stream of news from Iraq requires CBS News to stay on the air full time through one round or more of the tournament, the cable channels would stand as the networks for each of the tournament's Midwest, West, South and East regions.
With each network able to show only one game at a time (TNN might be able to carry two because it has East and West Coast feeds), fans of each region might feel aggrieved if their favorite teams were not shown.
"If you have a Duke-Syracuse game and a Maryland-Florida game at the same time, you can only have one feed in the East and we can't switch around," McManus said.
"It's an issue that would be magnified around the country. If people in Kansas can't see Kansas' first-round game, that's an issue for a lot of people."
The technical inability of cable channels to provide regional coverage would also foreclose their ability to switch from one region to another for a brief look at what is happening in other games, or to leave at the end of one region's game to see the remainder of another's.
The cable channels are also hurt by their national reach. There are 106.7 million television households, but TNN and Nickelodeon each reach 86 million, and TV Land is available to 78.3 million.
CBS's ability to regionalize and switch among regions enables it to navigate the three-week tournament on its own. Yet the decisions made by CBS in the frenetic first four days ? like which game to show in each region and when to shift from a lopsided game to a closer one in another region ? is an annual source of debate among viewers.
McManus said the need to provide war coverage would in some ways make CBS's task simpler, because it would require far fewer decisions to be made during the frenetic first and second rounds. "But it would cause more viewer dissatisfaction," he added.
CBS is concerned that moving games to cable channels might affect its advertising revenue.
"Our goals are twofold," McManus said. "One, protect the revenue streams and two, protect our fans. The advertising will be impacted if we deliver a smaller rating than we promised. Cable normally isn't as highly rated and it could be a ratings shortfall, which would have to be made up with make-good units."
Make-goods are free commercials offered in other programs.
The only way for fans to increase their satisfaction is to pay $49 for DirecTV's satellite package, which shows 37 games from outside a subscriber's home market.
Sorry this is so long, but it requires a registration at NYTimes and I know some will not want to do that.
Tournament Viewers May Miss Out if There's War
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
[C] BS Sports' contingency plan for broadcasting the N.C.A.A. Division I men's basketball tournament if the country goes to war includes shifting parts of the event to cable channels that, like CBS, are also owned by Viacom.
If CBS is forced to drastically reorganize its broadcasts of the tournament for a day or more, it could mean that a powerhouse team like Arizona would pre-empt "A-Team" reruns on TNN, Kentucky would replace "The Wild Thornberrys" on Nickelodeon and Kansas would take temporary hold of the "Gilligan's Island" slot on TV Land.
In a war, urgent coverage from CBS News would take precedence over the tournament, which the Viacom-owned network is paying $6 billion to televise through 2013. There is no way to be certain if CBS would pre-empt the tournament for no more than one or two days, then follow up in ensuing days with interruptions for special reports.
"We're talking virtually every day about this," Leslie Moonves, the president of CBS, said yesterday. "It depends on how early it happens. Clearly, in the beginning, war coverage is when you'd expect wall-to-wall news coverage."
He said the decision to cut away from full-time war coverage "is all about national sensitivity."
Four days after the Persian Gulf war started in January 1991, the National Football League's conference title games were played; NBC cut away from the Bills-Raiders American Football Conference game for nearly 17 minutes, and CBS left the Giants-49ers National Football Conference game for an extended timeout.
For the past month, CBS has analyzed the options available to it inside its parent company, Viacom, which also owns the TNN, Nickelodeon and TV Land channels. Other Viacom networks, like MTV and VH1 have been ruled out, Sean McManus, the president of CBS Sports, said.
"We're also having talks with various non-Viacom cable companies, to see what their interest is," McManus added. "ESPN is an option." An ESPN spokesman could not confirm any talks or the network's interest.
If the tournament's games move to three or four cable outlets, coverage will be hobbled most critically on the first two days of the tournament, March 20-21, when 16 games are played each day throughout the day. During Round 2, on March 22-23, there are eight games a day.
On its own, CBS showcases the tournament by dividing the nation into multiple regions to serve what are called "areas of natural interest"; the network can single out which of several games being played at once will be seen in each of more than 200 TV markets. A similar type of regionalization is used by CBS for its N.F.L. games on Sundays.
But channels like TNN, Nickelodeon and TV Land cannot regionalize; they send out live national feeds to thousands of cable systems. So viewers in New York, for example, see the same thing subscribers in Tucson or in Raleigh, N.C., see.
"The biggest problem is that in the first two days, four games are going on simultaneously in four different regions," McManus said.
If a continuous stream of news from Iraq requires CBS News to stay on the air full time through one round or more of the tournament, the cable channels would stand as the networks for each of the tournament's Midwest, West, South and East regions.
With each network able to show only one game at a time (TNN might be able to carry two because it has East and West Coast feeds), fans of each region might feel aggrieved if their favorite teams were not shown.
"If you have a Duke-Syracuse game and a Maryland-Florida game at the same time, you can only have one feed in the East and we can't switch around," McManus said.
"It's an issue that would be magnified around the country. If people in Kansas can't see Kansas' first-round game, that's an issue for a lot of people."
The technical inability of cable channels to provide regional coverage would also foreclose their ability to switch from one region to another for a brief look at what is happening in other games, or to leave at the end of one region's game to see the remainder of another's.
The cable channels are also hurt by their national reach. There are 106.7 million television households, but TNN and Nickelodeon each reach 86 million, and TV Land is available to 78.3 million.
CBS's ability to regionalize and switch among regions enables it to navigate the three-week tournament on its own. Yet the decisions made by CBS in the frenetic first four days ? like which game to show in each region and when to shift from a lopsided game to a closer one in another region ? is an annual source of debate among viewers.
McManus said the need to provide war coverage would in some ways make CBS's task simpler, because it would require far fewer decisions to be made during the frenetic first and second rounds. "But it would cause more viewer dissatisfaction," he added.
CBS is concerned that moving games to cable channels might affect its advertising revenue.
"Our goals are twofold," McManus said. "One, protect the revenue streams and two, protect our fans. The advertising will be impacted if we deliver a smaller rating than we promised. Cable normally isn't as highly rated and it could be a ratings shortfall, which would have to be made up with make-good units."
Make-goods are free commercials offered in other programs.
The only way for fans to increase their satisfaction is to pay $49 for DirecTV's satellite package, which shows 37 games from outside a subscriber's home market.