Air Ball: Blowouts Could Lead CBS To Record-Low NCAA Ratings
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CBS Taps Kansas-Davidson For
"60 Minutes" Lead-In Time Slot |
This year's NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament "might become the lowest-rated ever," according to Michael Hiestand of USA TODAY. Through Saturday's games, coverage on CBS is down 11% from '07. Hiestand writes CBS' "straightforward sports coverage" makes the net "dependent on the action itself. This year, the action "isn't always playing ball." Hiestand notes CBS last night "seemed to have taken a gamble" as it chose to broadcast Kansas-Davidson in its "60 Minutes" lead-in time slot, rather than Texas-Memphis. CBS Sports Senior VP/Programming Mike Aresco: "It absolutely was a hard call. But, ultimately, we felt we had a shot at a home run (with a possible Davidson upset.) Davidson was the story of the tournament to date, and you had to figure Texas-Memphis would turn out to be a pretty darn good game." But Hiestand notes "it wasn't," as Memphis' 85-67 win was "just the last in a string of suspenseless matchups in a case of March Madness that seems largely sedated." The net's 10 games last Thursday-Saturday "didn't involve many buzzers being beaten," with an average victory margin of 15.3 points (USA TODAY, 3/31).
TALENT REVIEW: In N.Y., Richard Sandomir writes CBS analyst Jay Bilas "trampled" over play-by-play announcer Dick Enberg with "lengthy analytical treatises or delayed the play-by-play with interminable stories. ... It sounded rude." But CBS' Bill Raftery and Verne Lundquist "understand boundaries and create enjoyable TV." Raftery "offers quick analysis, notable catchphrases and slightly ribald humor" (N.Y. TIMES, 3/29).
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Ford Field Set-Up For NCAA Basketball
Games Garners Mixed Reviews |
FORD FIELD REVIEW: Ford Field hosted the Midwest Regional games, and in Detroit, Shawn Windsor wrote the stadium as a "venue for championship basketball is just fine." Windsor noted the stadium design "made the place feel like an outsized basketball barn. In fact, with all the advertisements covered in black cloth -- per NCAA regulations -- Ford Field almost felt like it belonged in 'Hoosiers.'" Kansas coach Bill Self said of the venue, "I would never say 'bad.' But I would say pretty indifferent. The fans are so far away." Windsor added when the stadium is "less than 50% full, I don't think you have that intimate feel like you have if you're playing in a smaller venue." But Davidson G Max Paulhus Gosselin: "The court is amazing. The way they put bleachers on the field makes us feel like we are closer to our fans" (DETROIT FREE PRESS, 3/30). Also in Detroit, Terry Foster writes Ford Field is scheduled to host the '09 Final Four, and though it "looked grand and passed its dry run, most basketball fans are used to cozy, intimate settings. That cannot be duplicated at Ford Field, which expects to pack in 70,000 fans" for next year's Final Four. Kansas fan Dave Wewers: "The sight lines were just OK. I mean, you are just so far removed, but I guess you cannot help that because the stadium is so big" (DETROIT NEWS, 3/31). But the DETROIT NEWS' Rob Parker wrote the regional games Friday at Ford were a "flop -- with a capital 'F.'" There is "no other way to describe the feeling of two important basketball games played at a cavernous football field." Parker: "There was just no intensity, no excitement. It was just empty and that's coming from a reporter who had the best seat in the house." Fans were "too far from the field" and "that's not how basketball games are supposed to feel" (DETROIT NEWS, 3/29).
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Reliant Stadium Hosts NCAA
Basketball Games Without Problems |
HOUSTON, WE HAVE NO PROBLEMS: In Houston, David Barron reports the NCAA South Regional at Reliant Stadium "began with no problems, despite a scheduling quirk that required [Texas], whose fans accounted for about 75 [%] of the crowd, to play at [6:30pm CT] at the tail end of Houston's Friday afternoon rush hour." At the start of Friday's Texas-Stanford game, the stadium "looked like it does during a noon Texans start, with wide swatches of unfilled seats." But the "lower bowl was 60 [%] filled five minutes into the first half." Barron noted one of the "significant unknowns entering the week was the impact of the new riser system that fits 31 rows of gently sloped seats over the first 13 rows of Reliant Stadium's permanent seats to bring fans closer to courtside." But fan Don Jones, who sat in the last row of the temporary riser section, said that "if anything, the slope was too gentle." Jones: "I'd like to see them have the risers a little bit higher and separate the levels a little more. Nobody wants to sit down during a game like this" (HOUSTON CHRONICLE, 3/29).
JOOST BOOST: The FINANCIAL TIMES' Edgecliffe-Johnson & Chaffin reported Online TV service Joost, in partnership with CBS, this weekend used the tournament to "test a live streaming technology that it hopes will reduce the financial and technical burdens of broadcasting popular events online." Joost's Senior VP/Engineering Matt Zelesko said that the company's peer-to-peer technology "could significantly lower the cost of handling heavy online traffic for live events." Joost VP/Content Strategy & Acquisition Vipin Goyal said of the impact for CBS, "In the future, this could cut millions of dollars of bandwidth costs for them for this two- to three-week period." But Zelesko said that the technology was "in its infancy and had suffered 'a very rocky day' on the first day of the tournament." However, since then, "several thousand hours of games had been watched over the system, with the average user watching for 42 minutes" (FINANCIAL TIMES, 3/28).
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