• March 15, 2001

Viacom Inc.'s CBS Sports president Sean McManus said yeterday that the network is still glad it signed a mega-deal with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to televise the men's basketball tournament, and he thinks the low Nielsen Media Research television ratings can improve.

"Do I like reduced ratings? No," he said. "But I think it can be turned around. I don't see an irreversible ratings slide. To gauge whether it's a smart investment, we sell more advertising dollars than we pay in rights."

Since 1990 the tournament's overall television ratings have fallen 32.6% and the championship game ratings have dropped 29.5%. Last year the 2000 tourney was the lowest rated tournament to date.

That made it tough for CBS to explain why it inked an 11-year $6 billion deal in 2000 with the NCAA to continue broadcasting March Madness through 2014. The $6 billion deal starts in 2003 and runs through 2014. For the 2001 tourney CBS will pay $216 million to broadcast the game.

CBS also came under scrutiny for inking a huge deal for the National Football League (NFL) to broadcast their rights, but they were vindicated in fall 2000. CBS won the costly rights to broadcast the games in 1999 by paying $4.5 billion over eight years, which comes to $562,500,000 million each year. Viacom president Mel Karmazin said in August 2000 the network is making a profit on CBS's NFL broadcasts.