With CBS (NYSE: CBS-A) coming off a poor quarter, and perceived weakness in their business model because they may be overly reliant on scripted TV shows for their broadcast business, the coming of the March Madness NCAA Men's Basketball tournament season is just what the doctor ordered for them.
Not only will it focus their attention on the deals they made, but it will give them a little breathing room and hopefully - bragging rights - on the revenue generated during the time. Even so, it won't be enough to dethrone Fox (NYSE: NWS-A) from their position as the No. 1 network for the fourth year in a row.
The last quarter for CBS had their profits falling from $335 million or 43 cents a share from the last quarter of 2006, to $286 million, or 42 cents a share in the last quarter of 2007. Revenue also fell by 3 percent during that same period.
So there's nothing like the blockbuster 2008 NCAA Men's Basketball tourney to get some of the prestige and hopefully, more income, coming into the struggling network.
What this should do, and the network should take advantage of, is the attention will go to their handling of the tournment on television, as well as the large amount of streaming video of the games online. That will help the traffic at their web site, along with rights deals connected to it.
This is coming at the right time for CBS, and they should be able to regather themselves and take the opportunity to use this window to ready themselves for the post-tournament broadcast and Web schedule.
The enormous amount of eyeballs they'll get gives them the perfect circumstance to let the public know what they have through television and web spots. If that doesn't help them, they better think in terms of developing a whole new batch of shows, as their schedule doesn't seem as potent as it used to be.
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