Dear CBS Sports Bigwigs,
First of all, my congratulations to you on the deal of the century. Your exclusive rights to men’s basketball for eleven years cost you six billion dollars, which, while rich, is a mere drop in the bucket compared with the ad revenues that you’re reaping as we speak. Which is possibly why the NCAA has the choice of opting out of the contract after this year. I hope you’re wearing out that kneeler, rubbing the paint off your rosaries, and lighting those saint candles. Apply where appropriate.
Anyway, now that you’ve collected your money and thanked your gods, let me ask you a question: where’s the show? What the hell happened to the basketball?
The NCAA championship tournament is a whirlwind of teams traveling all across the country to play in cities far from home. Two tip-offs per weekend, and then they fly off to the next destination (that is, assuming they can make it that far). As a result, most teams play in television markets not their own. So, what’s a network to do?
For some reason, CBS’s answer is to broadcast “interesting” games to a very broad definition of a local market. Now, I’m not privy to how you decide who sees what. Nor am I there when your producers decide to cut one market to the final two minutes of a different game. By mid-afternoon today, I’ll have had six or seven games beamed to me in their waning seconds, no context provided other than the clock ticking down. And I don’t like it.
Now, I’m a DirecTV subscriber, and, wouldn’t you know it, my satellite provider offers a March Madness package. Watch six games at once, all for the low-low price of $69. For three weeks? Are you kidding me? Alternatively, I can catch all the games online. Sure, all the games. But clearly that doesn’t mean all at once, it means I have access to all the games, unlike when I tune into my local CBS station. What is that about?
I’m not naive; I realize that TV can only broadcast so many things at once. But this is March Madness! A rite for every basketball lover the world over. So why can’t we get any love? And, excuse the digression, but why is the new thing in media all about putting additional coverage online? When I subscribe to a magazine, for instance, I shouldn’t have to log-on to their website to “see the complete list.” Likewise, I shouldn’t have to visit CBS.com to catch the off-game, or thirty, as the case may be. It’s a bogus system that leaves the consumer out in the cold.
I don’t know which of the myriad of networks is owned by CBS, but why not copy NBC’s 2008 Olympic scheme and utilize your broad presence on cable to live up to your exclusive rights contract? Let your regularly scheduled crap take a back seat for ten days between March and April, and get some more bang for your six billion bucks.
Oh, and while you’re at it, you’d also be doing something responsible for your paying customers. You know, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Respectfully Yours,
Twenty million annoyed fans who are trying to keep all of their brackets updated with the latest information that they have no choice but to search the internet for, or risk going blind trying to read the tiny print of your on-screen box-scores.
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Mar 19, 2009 @ 16:30 EST5EDT
