Roster Expands For March Madness VOD Highlights Package
Time Warner, Bright House, RCN, Astound Are The Latest To Sign With CBS College Sports
By Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 3/12/2008 7:03:00 AM
CBS College Sports Network continues to build its base of affiliates for the “NCAA March Madness Highlights" video on demand package.
The network, rechristened this month from CSTV, has signed deals with Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, Astound Broadband and RCN Corp. for the distributors to present a package of ad-free, video-on-demand highlights from the 63 games, comprising the NCAA Division 1 men’s basketball tournament, which tips off March 20.
CBS has also reached a deal with TVN Entertainment to distribute the on-demand highlights within hours of the contests’ conclusion.
The NCAA March Madness Highlights package, an assemblage of CBS Sports, the collegiate sports administrative organization and the cable network, also includes “NCAA March Madness Memories,” a collection of 25 archival vignettes, highlighting great tourney games past.
In addition to the above-mentioned affiliates, CBS Sports Network has reached agreements for the VOD package, which is available in both standard and high-definition formats, with Comcast Corp., Bresnan Communications, Charter Communications, Dish Network, Insight Communications, Mediacom Communications, Midcontinent Communications, Wave Broadband, Sunflower Broadband, Horry Telephone Cooperative, Cablevision Systems and Verizon’s FiOS TV.
“Given the competitive landscape video providers face, they must ‘wow’ their subscribers. Virtually every major video distributor is participating in this offering and they agree NCAA March Madness Highlights is the perfect marriage of technology and content,” said CBS College Sports executive vice president of distribution Bob Rose in a statement. “There are millions of fans who only have five minutes of free time, and now have a chance to watch the highlights they crave when and how they want.”
Deploying the TVNow fast-turnaround service, CBS Sports and CBS College Sports will use TVN’s asset delivery and management platform, Adoniss2, and its PRI Web-based metadata management toolset. This Emmy-nominated system allows users to actively track content, view menu structures, and change metadata both pre-pitch and post-pitch.
Comcast Media Center will also be transporting the on-demand package to a number of the affiliates, according to CBS College Sports officials.
As for the “March Madness on Demand” package of streamed tourney games, CBS and the NCAA have opened other sites as points of entry to the contests. During tournaments past, the streamed games were only accessible for registered users of CBSSports.com Now, ESPN.com, Yahoo and other sites can provide links to the 63 games.
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