Believe it or not, there was a time when you couldn’t watch every NCAA Tournament game live. Hard to fathom now that you can not only watch all the games live, but you can stream them as well. At any given time, you can dial in one of the four networks covering the action, CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV and see a live game in its entirety. There were some 12 hours of games brought to you live during each day of the first weekend. It’s incredible and what every college basketball fan dreams of. It wasn’t always that way.
Back in the day, the telecasts were pretty raw. Not many graphics and no score bug. The score and time left would flash up after a made basket and going to and coming back from commercial breaks. Imagine tuning into a game in progress and not knowing the score? How spoiled have we gotten? The answer? Very.
Thankfully the tournament broadcast has evolved as quickly as my bracket was busted on night number one of the big dance. That’s pretty fast, you’ll just have to trust me on that. So how did we get to the point of being able to see every game from start to finish? It was a long slow process that eventually caught up to the needs of the rabid fan.
The current format is more than fans could ask for. When the contract between the NCAA, CBS and Turner was signed after the 2010 Tournament, some were skeptical. The fact that games were going to be spread out over several networks was unique for sure. Would fans embrace what seemed chaotic?
“That’s going to take some getting used to, but it’s a better programming option for the viewer at home and the basketball fan,” CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2010. “More work on his or her part to find the game, but they get to decide what game they want to watch. In the past, I think we did a very good job of moving around, but it was our decision.” A costly decision with the deal worth a reported 10.8-billion dollars.
“The tournament’s success outgrew one network’s ability to provide the coverage fans were looking for,” David Levy, then the president of Turner Sports, said in 2010. There’s a lot of truth in that statement. This current deal solved the issue of ‘cutaways’ and also infused talent from both CBS and the Turner properties together. Greg Gumbel, Ernie Johnson Jr, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Clark Kellogg, Seth Davis and others joined forces to provide in-depth and informative studio shows. The collaboration is working.
Let’s dive into a little history here on the tournament, which was really the second fiddle to the NIT for many years until the 1960’s. The first broadcast of the NCAA Tournament championship game dates back to 1946. New York’s CBS-TV televised the Oklahoma State vs. North Carolina game, won by the Cowboys. It was estimated that an audience of just 500-thousand saw the title contest.
It wasn’t until 1952 that games were televised regionally for the first time. Then in 1954 La Salle defeated Bradley in the first nationally televised title game. It all changed in 1969. NBC paid about a half million dollars for the rights to the tournament. They televised a doubleheader on the opening day of the tournament, then allowing each market to get two of the four regional final games.
The Final Four started on a Thursday, but each market would get just one of the games. Can you imagine today only getting a chance to see ONE of the national semifinal games? Championship and consolation games were played on a Saturday and both were televised by NBC.
In those days teams were divided into brackets based on geography. So, East Coast teams were placed in the East Region. The other regions were the West, Mideast and Midwest. You would only get East regional matchups televised in the Eastern part of the country and so on. Imagine living in the Midwest or East at the time and only getting to see the great UCLA teams of that day in the title game.
NBC would eventually expand some of its coverage in the early 1970’s, finally airing both national semifinal games. In the late 70’s NBC included opening weekend Sunday games and prime time regional coverage of four regional semifinal games, one for each market.
Things started to change for the better when, in 1980, an infant sports network known as ESPN got into the fray. ESPN picked up the NCAA Productions feeds of a couple of games on the opening Thursday night and then three on the first Friday night of the tournament. ESPN also picked up these feeds for the regional semifinals the following Thu/Fri carrying five games live and the other three on tape delay. Not a perfect situation, but better. Then CBS entered the picture.
In 1982 CBS debuted the Selection Sunday Show to announce the teams that made the tournament and what matchups were ahead. CBS added coverage of the opening round with live late-night games from the West Region on Thursday and Friday at 11:30 pm in the eastern time zone. The coverage featured a tripleheader on the first Saturday as well. ESPN stayed in the picture for the time being, picking up the NCAA Productions feeds and carried live doubleheaders on the opening Thursday and Friday nights. ESPN also ran many games on tape delay after the CBS 11:30 telecast both nights.
The coverage further expanded in 1983 and 1984, but then the tournament itself expanded to 64 teams in 1985. CBS would step up their game. This resulted in almost non-stop basketball for nearly 55 consecutive hours from Thursday at noon through early Saturday evening. Things stayed largely the same until 1991, when ESPN was cut out of the picture and CBS began a new seven-year contract that was for upwards of one-billion dollars. This time the deal included live coverage of all sessions of the championship. No more tape delay.
In 1999 DirecTV entered the picture with the Mega March Madness package. That enabled viewers to see every out-of-market region games during the first three rounds of the tourney.
In the years to follow, the NCAA Tournament was available as a live stream. CBSSports.com and later the official March Madness Live app provided you coverage of the games. Remember the “boss” button? If you were watching on your computer, you’d hit the button and a fake spreadsheet would pop up to make it seem like you were still working. Ingenious.
Things kind of stayed status-quo until 2007. That’s when CBS allowed what was then called CSTV, now known as CBS Sports Network, to air one of the regular network’s games each day on the first Thursday and Friday. This was the case until 2009.
Everything changed after the 2010 Tournament. The mega-deal between the NCAA and it’s now two television partners, CBS and the Turner Networks gave us what is today our “new normal” when watching games. Yes, they are spread out across a multitude of channels, but the games are in HD, the graphics are terrific and the basketball itself has been very entertaining.
Think of how far we’ve come from the early days of the tournament and television. Watching the games in 1990, just 31 years ago, you wouldn’t have known any better not to see on your screen how many timeouts each team had. Right? Could you even have imagined the possibility of seeing the shot clock on your screen at all times? Going back even a little further to 1970, would you have been so bold to demand to watch a game live instead of tape delay? Mindboggling to think that we used to rely on announcers and us actually paying attention to know the details of a game without being spoon fed the info. We weren’t looking at our smart phones or typing on our iPads or tablets either.
Some of you were not around before this wealth of technology and graphics so you are probably reading in horror. It wasn’t so bad, it’s all we knew. Though if given the choice I’d much prefer today’s telecasts. The information, the camera shots, the in-game reports from the sidelines and graphics to support all of the above make it a much more enjoyable watch. Oh and of course there’s our “One Shining Moment”. What did we ever do without that?
In saying all this, there is just one question left to ask; what does TruTV actually show the other 11 months of the year?
Andy Masur is a columnist for BSM and works for WGN Radio as an anchor and play-by-play announcer. He also teaches broadcasting at the Illinois Media School. During his career he has called games for the Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres and Chicago White Sox. He can be found on Twitter @Andy_Masur1 or you can reach him by email at Andy@Andy-Masur.com.
