March Madness Comes to YouTube
By Garth Johnston -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/15/2007 7:03:00 AM
With the start of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship today, March 15, CBS Sports has announced the availability of game clips and highlights on a designated YouTube “channel” sponsored by Pontiac.
NCAA and CBS Sports content on the YouTube channel will be rateable and embeddable just like any other content on the video-sharing site. The channel also heavily promotes a Pontiac-sponsored interactive portion on NCAASports.com in which visitors are invited to vote, round-by-round, on a "Game Changing Performance."
The top vote-earning team’s school will receive a $100,000 general scholarship to be announced during halftime at the championship game on Monday, April 2.
CBS Sports is heavily pushing a multiplatform approach to the popular sports event this year. Beyond the YouTube channel clips, the tournament will also be available live on NCAA March Madness on Demand at NCAASports.com, on TV out of market on CBS’ college sports network CSTV as well as multicast on some cable systems including Cox.
Further, the championship games will be available live to Verizon V Cast Mobile TV subscribers.The NCAA and CBS are also selling archival footage from past tournaments on DVD through Amazon.com. Free streamcasts of old games are also available on the Internet retailer’s Website.
The announcement of CBS’ new YouTube channel comes just days after the company’s former corporate sibling Viacom filed a $1 billion copyright infringement suit against Google, YouTube’s owner.
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