CBS will include its coverage of the NCAA tournament on
their sites on Prodigy and the World Wide Web. The online
venture features a sweepstakes in which Prodigy and World Wide
Web users select the winning teams of all 63 tournament games,
with the winner receiving a grand prize of a trip for two to the
'96 Final Four. The sweepstakes is sponsored by Doritos, the
first to sponsor a network promotion on the CBS "Eye On The Net"
site on the World Wide Web. In addition to being a major
advertiser of the coverage, Doritos presents "Inside the Games
with Michael Jordan," a look at the great moments of the
tournament, to be broadcast between the two Final Four games on
Saturday, April 1. Also, CBS announcers and analysts provide
analysis of the first round match-ups, and users have a chance to
go "behind-the-scenes" of the tournament from the CBS Sports
Virtual Press Room (CBS).
SELECTION SHOW: Ratings for CBS' extended coverage of the
NCAA Selection Show were down 29% from last year (7.5 to 5.3),
and industry insiders "suggested they were the lowest ever for a
selection show." Meanwhile, ESPN's Selection Show which aired
opposite of CBS got a 3.4 rating, up 55% from last year. In San
Francisco, C.W. Nevius writes on the CBS' hour-long show: "CBS
just tacked half an hour of fluff on at the beginning. The
problem was, angry viewers thought they were merely stalling. If
you tuned into ESPN, for example, you were given a specific
countdown to the start of the announcement" (SAN FRANCISCO
CHRONICLE, 3/15).
