Fang's Bites Media Notebook Edition No. 7, March Madness

It's March Madness Time

It’s been a while. My apologies. My hope was to write this newsletter every week and it’s becoming monthly and if you’re paying for this, that’s not what you’re supposed to get. My apologies. Let’s not pussyfoot around and get into the column.

The Madness is about to begin

Courtesy: NCAA

One of the best months of the sports calendar is upon us, the three weeks of the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Tournaments bring viewers a lot of high quality basketball plus plenty of drama.

CBS and the channels of TNT Sports, TBS, TNT and truTV will air the men’s tournament. The CBS/Warner Bros Discovery consortium has sold out of its ad inventory which is a good thing.

This year, CBS will have the Final Four on Saturday, April 7 then the Championship Game will air on Monday, April 9. After a whole bunch of complaints, the final is expected to tip off from the Alamodome in San Antonio at 8:50 p.m. ET which is a half-hour earlier than normal. CBS/TBS has traditionally aired the final around 9:20 p.m.

Personally, I never had an issue with the National Championship Game airing at 9:20 p.m. ET even if I had to work the following day, but there are many who have complained annually that the game starts too late and ends after 11:30 p.m. on the East Coast which pushes the traditional “One Shining Moment” montage to about midnight. Unless there’s overtime, it would mean that “One Shining Moment” gets to air before 11:30 p.m. which I hope ends the silly bellyaching over the late tipoff.

Here are the announcing crews for CBS/TNT Sports for the first and second rounds. It would have been an upset if the “A:” team of Ian Eagle, Grant Hill, Bill Raftery and Tracy Wolfson weren’t following overall #1 seed of Duke in Raleigh.

Tuesday, 03/18 & Wednesday, 03/19 — First Four, Dayton, OH
Spero Dedes/Jim Spanarkel//Jon Rothstein

Thursday, 03/20 & Saturday, 03/22 — First and Second Rounds
Brian Anderson/Jim Jackson//Allie LaForce — Rupp Arena, Lexington, KY
Andrew Catalon/Steve Lappas//Evan Washburn — Providence Civic Center, Providence, RI
Tom McCarthy/Debbie Antonelli/Steve Smith//AJ Ross — Intrust Bank Arena, Wichita, KS
Brad Nessler/Brendan Haywood//Dana Jacobson — Ball Arena, Denver, CO

Friday, 03/21 & Sunday, 03/23 — First and Second Rounds
Lisa Byington/Robbie Hummel/Jalen Rose//Andy Katz — Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle, WA
Ian Eagle/Grant Hill/Bill Raftery//Tracy Wolfson — Lenovo Center, Raleigh, NC
Spero Dedes/Jim Spanarkel//Jon Rothstein — Rocket Arena, Cleveland, OH
Kevin Harlan/Dan Bonner/Stan Van Gundy//Lauren Shehadi — Fiserv Arena, Milwaukee, WI