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RELATED POSTSCBS and the March Madness Experience
Talk to any die-hard college basketball fan about CBS’ coverage of the NCAA Tournament and you’ll hear mostly grumbling about their lack of understanding of what the viewers want. I wonder if they actually do any user research?
- Their choice of which game to show and when to switch between games is generally horrible. Instead of trying to figure out what the people want, why not take NBC’s lead (with the Olympics) and ESPN’s lead with pretty much everything and show all the games on different channels? Viacom owns Spike, BET, and CSTV, all of which would be reasonable options.
- Their lead announcer team is generally despised by all the die-hards. Sure, Nance and Packer have the most experience, but if that many people hate them, doesn’t that tell you something?
- Not all the games are available in HD. With all the money that is spent on this event, how can they not show everything in High Def?
- Kudos to CBS for streaming the games online for free — this is a great feature. But why not use this to pilot some community features like live chat while watching the games? It seems that they are wasting an opportunity to really draw in their viewers.
- Clark Kellogg smugly commented yesterday that “the selection committee must be pleased” about all the higher seeds advanced in what was one of the more banal opening days in recent memory. Hey Clark, what about your viewers — do you think they really care about the selection committee?
- This may be out of CBS’ control, but on Saturday there is one game starting at ~1pm and three starting around 5. Why not have 2 and 2 so more people get to watch more games?
I’ve listed out just a few examples, but I could go on and on — CBS consistently shows that they don’t understand their viewing audience. Perhaps they should conduct some field testing and surveys in the future.
