Many fans “were surprised” by CBS’ decision to choose the Ohio State-Kansas game “in the traditionally more high profile late slot rather [than] the Kentucky-Louisville showdown” on Saturday, according to Neil Best of NEWSDAY. CBS Sports Chair Sean McManus said, "It was a really, really close call, and we talked about it a lot on Sunday. I don't think there was any right or wrong answer on this one. There normally is a marquee matchup that makes our decision pretty easy." He added, "The Ohio State game on paper looked like it might be a closer game. … And we thought the geographical spread was a little better. Let's face it, the Midwest brings an enormous amount of viewers to the television set. The Big Ten always attracts a ton of viewers.” McManus continued, "It was really a tossup this year. We just went with our gut and thought the viewership might be a bit higher for the second game" (NEWSDAY.com, 3/27).
SPORTS ON THE GO: BROADCASTING & CABLE’s George Winslow noted as “another sign of the growing importance of smartphones and tablets for sports, a new analysis from comScore has found users were accessing significantly more sports content on those mobile devices than usual and that smartphones and tablets accounted for a fifth of the Web traffic in sports content during the first round games of the NCAA Tournament.” The study shows that digital consumption of sports on computers, tablets and smartphones “increased by 79% on the first day of the Tournament.” comScore also analyzed computer versus non-computer traffic, “which is primarily made up of smartphones and tablets, for the Thursday, March 15 and Friday, March 16 of the NCAA tournament compared to the average of the three previous Thursdays and Fridays.” Results showed that “about 20% of the sports traffic was coming from smartphones and tablets, much higher than other categories, where mobile accounted for only 10%” (BROADCASTINGCABLE.com, 3/23).
