The joint sales effort between Turner and CBS came about when the networks teamed up to win the NCAA's media and marketing rights last spring with a 14-year, $10.8 billion deal. The coupled effort
made sense from a programming and business perspective. Turner's presence mitigated the huge financial pressure that CBS felt to deliver on annual rights fees that average $771 million, and Turner's
array of networks -- TBS, TNT, truTV -- would enable national distribution for every game of the men's basketball tournament, rather than the regional approach CBS used in the early rounds.
Turner and CBS executives are selling in-game units across all of their channels, but they're also working to create additional inventory through NCAA tournament shoulder programming, which will run
before and after the games that day.
advertisement
advertisement
Read the whole story at Sports Business Journal »
