Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 17, 1990 TAG: 9003172240
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
With the 9:30 taped show of Friday night's Michigan-Illinois State game in the West Region, the cable network's perennial NCAA Tournament coverage ends.
ESPN built its reputation on its comprehensive coverage of the tournament's first round. But CBS Sports paid the NCAA $1 billion for exclusive rights through the 1997 tournament.
Eleven years ago, Dick Vitale was a bald, one-eyed, wacko ex-coach. ESPN introduced the whip-around among games, and the whipped-up analyst.
They're pretty emotional about this parting at ESPN, and understandably so. After all, the cable network may be in almost 60 million homes and have NFL and major league baseball rights now, but it has always been the network of college basketball.
Make no mistake, it still will be. ESPN will televise more than 225 regular-season games next season and continue its stellar coverage of conference championship week. However, the network isn't invited to the big dance anymore.
The network that pioneered the electronic cut-in is being cut out. That isn't good news for tournament viewers, who will see fewer games in future years.
Into homes equipped with cable, the CBS-ESPN combination will produce live telecasts of 30 of the tournament's 63 games this year. ESPN televised another nine first-rounders on tape.
Next year, with CBS doing the whole show, viewers in each market will get 26 complete games, plus the second halves of two other afternoon first-rounders.
There will be no tape-delay telecasts. And NCAA Productions, which has syndicated first-round games into regional markets - such as Friday night's Virginia-Notre Dame game on Roanoke's WDBJ - will not televise tournament games.
CBS will show every game, regionalizing the first round the same way it has its second-round coverage since bidding the tournament away from NBC in 1982.
In recent years, ESPN aired first-round games on two days from noon-6:30 p.m. and 7-11:30 p.m., then CBS Sports followed with a late-night contest.
Starting in '91, the first round coverage will run on CBS stations from noon-5 p.m. and 8 p.m.-midnight - two afternoon games, the finish of another, and two night games.
The second-round CBS coverage will remain as it is scheduled today and Sunday - noon-9 p.m. and noon-7 p.m., respectively. That is seven complete games in two days, plus cut-ins.
CBS will show two games to every market on regional semifinals Thursday and Friday, as it does now. The rest of the tournament will be nationally televised.
The Saturday regional finals doubleheader will air from 1-6 p.m., as it does now. Next year, the Sunday regional finals twin bill moves to 4-9 p.m. That gives CBS an additional prime-time game and makes a slot for 2 p.m. live coverage of the Division II men's championship game.
On Final Four Saturday, the men's national semifinals will remain from 5-10 p.m. But the women's semifinals, traditionally played on Friday night to set up a Sunday championship, will move to noon Saturday, creating 10 consecutive hours of college basketball.
The women's final will be played Sunday afternoon and the men's final on Monday night, as has been the tradition.
There will be seven more hours of CBS prime-time coverage next year, but eight fewer hours of first-round live coverage than is provided by the CBS-ESPN setup.
That isn't to say the CBS Sports coverage will not be superb. The network has done nearly as much to boost the popularity of the NCAA Tournament as ESPN. But the tournament put ESPN into America's sports consciousness. When the network was airing slow-pitch softball and Australian Rules Football, the NCAA was its major attraction.
Before ESPN, coverage of the tournament's first round and the regional semifinals was piecemeal at best. The only viewers were from markets in which station managers picked up games of local interest.
In a day when the miniseries is fading as a television staple, the NCAA Tournament remains the best of that genre. The Richmonds, Austin Peays, Northern Iowas and Arkansas-Little Rocks rewrote the scripts every year.
I've pulled all-nighters with ESPN's coverage. I will miss Vitale's outrageousness, and ESPN's comprehensiveness.
Sure, the NCAA has gotten rich off CBS Sports. But how about the rest of you?
Think for a minute: How many of you are in an office pool now, when you weren't a decade ago? And how many of you found out from ESPN that you lost the Northern Iowa-Missouri game?
by CNB