Last week, AT&T and Federated Media debuted “March Tweetness,” a Twitter-endorsed page geared around the March Madness college basketball tournament. It was Twitter’s second attempt at what amounted to an advertising play, and I thought it looked modestly promising. And now it’s gone. At least temporarily. The problem? No one checked with the NCAA, which keeps a tight grip on any and all college sports trademarks.
Earlier this week, Twitter started rolling out its first ad experiment–an “ExecTweet” page, sponsored by Microsoft. Here’s the next one–a “March Tweetness” page, sponsored by AT&T.
I’ve only watched a couple minutes of March Madness so far, and I haven’t watched a second on my laptop. But apparently I’m in the minority: CBS, which is streaming the entire college basketball tournament for free on the Web, says traffic to its video player is up 56 percent compared to last year.
Absolutely nuts about college basketball, but afraid you won’t find yourself in front of a TV or a computer when March Madness rolls around? Grab your iPhone and five bucks, and you’re in business.
Here’s a pleasant, rare bit of media news sunshine: CBS says advertisers are still lining up to get into its March Madness Webcast. The company expects to generate $30 million in Web ads from the college tournament this year, up 30 percent from 2008.
Do you love college basketball but hate Microsoft? Then CBS has a tough choice in store for you next month. That’s because the network will be delivering its March Madness coverage using Redmond’s Silverlight streaming media technology, which for some reason stirs apoplectic emotions among a subset of tech zealots.
CBS paid $1.8 billion for CNET last summer, and today it is dealing with the consequences: A re-org and layoffs. CBS execs won’t release a total for the number of people fired, so news will be coming out in piecemeal fashion for some time. In the meantime, here’s CBS Interactive’s new corporate structure, detailed in an internal memo distributed late today.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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