CBS Corp. wants to inject a little madness into online media.
The TV network plans to make all early-round games from the NCAA basketball tournament, known as March Madness, available for free on the Internet. When the tournament gets into full swing March 16, it will mark the first time a major broadcaster has shifted such an important programming franchise onto the Web without charging a subscription fee.
The March Madness on Demand service will black out local games -- plus the final three rounds of the tournament, when only one game is played at a time -- to avoid direct competition with CBS affiliates.
Broadband capacity will limit the Web audience to a few hundred thousand viewers at a time.
But analysts and industry executives described the experiment as a key inflection point in the Internet's maturation as a platform for the distribution of video. Eighteen big-name advertisers, including Marriott International, Dell Inc. and Pontiac, already have purchased all the available ad spots.
"The advertising world is willing to support streaming video in a way they haven't been willing to support it in years past," said Larry Kramer, president of CBS Digital Media.
In many ways, the NCAA tournament is an ideal vehicle for testing the willingness of viewers to fire up their computers to watch programs once reserved for television.
As many as four games are played at a time during the early rounds, yet CBS viewers can watch only one on their TVs. Fans are often rabid, rooting for their local college, alma mater or picks in office betting pools. And many of the early-round games take place during the week, when millions of enthusiasts are parked in front of high-speed connections at work.
"It combines three of America's time wasters: sports, gambling and surfing the Internet at work," said Jeff Lanctot, vice president and general manager of Avenue A/Razorfish, which bought ad time on the webcasts for Nike. "March Madness is going to show the real winner in the Digital Age is the consumer, because they're going to have choices like never before."
Network TV executives are under heavy pressure to find new revenue streams as ad-skipping technologies and declining broadcast audiences threaten their business. So they're experimenting with selling shows through Google Inc. and Apple Computer Inc. and occasionally streaming premiere episodes of new series to boost their profile.
