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CBS and Lowe’s Team for March Madness Cube Contest

March 9, 2012 by 1 Comment

Do you have one of those so-called Super Fans in your office? You know the type- they always come in with a hangdog expression when their team loses a game. Some are one sports fans but most almost always include support for the NCAA March Madness Tournament.

Now all of their years adding team pennants, photos of their favorite coaches and pinning up headlines from newspapers talking about epic wins can pay off due to an event from CBSSports.com and Lowe’s.

They have launched an event called March Madness Cube Mania for the 2012 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship that rewards a few select fans with the most rabid cubicle. The event runs from now until March 25th and calls for fans to decorate their cubes with their favorite teams’ colors and logos.

Once the decorations are finished all a fan has to do is take a tasteful photo of the cube and post it at the CBS Sports page on Facebook (Facebook/CBSSports).

In addition fans are encourage to share the images over social media such as Facebook and Twitter and to try and get their friends to vote. It would be good to ensure your friends are rooting for your teams first — or at least open to bribes.

The images will be sorted in a variety of manners including by most popular, teams represented and participating companies. After the closing day for submitting photos, March 25th, the polls open and will remain open from March 26 to March 30, 2012.

Three winners will be selected by a combination of public votes, and judging by the Social Media department at CBSSports.com based on originality and creativity. Grand prize winner’s photo will be announced on March 31, 2012 during The Final Four Show on CBS and receive a $300 gift card to Lowe’s. Two secondary winners will receive $150 Lowe’s gift cards.

In addition the grand prize winning photo will be announced on CBS during The Final Four Show prior to the Men’s Final Four semifinal games on March 31, 2012 so your efforts will receive a brief national note. So as they used to say in Chicago ‘Vote early and vote often!’

Filed Under: CBS Sports, Facebook, NCAA Hoops Tagged With: , ,

ESPN’s NFL32 Turns to Social Media for Topics With ‘Facebook Faceoff’

December 8, 2011 by 1 Comment

ESPN will enable Fans to determine some discussion topics

ESPN, Looking to increase the level of interactivity with its and the NFL’s fans, has developed a segment in one of its new NFL programs, NFL32, that will allow fans to submit questions via Facebook — questions that will hopefully help the ESPN show create feisty debate in a segment called Facebook Faceoff.

NFL32 is designed to be a yearlong one-hour show that features ESPN’s Suzy Kolber and Chris Mortenson as hosts and includes a variety of the network’s other NFL analysts. It uses a free-flowing format that the company touts as being highly interactive.

Now the show is taking interactivity to a new level by soliciting input from members of its Facebook friends. On its Facebook page NFL32 has posted the following:

Want to help stir things up on our NFL32 panel? Thursday we debut a new segment called “Facebook Faceoff”. Submit topics you want to see us debate on TV, and we’ll see which ones cause the biggest differences of opinion.

I have to say I like this plan on many levels. It helps bring broadcasting out of its shell and enable it to more directly interact with fans. I often turn on a sports program and find that it just seems to be a regurgitation of what I have heard on every other sports program. While there is always the danger that ESPN will select issues that cater to this mindset, at least there is a chance that it will open new avenues of conversation.

Broadcast sports programming often seems to talk down to sports fans. On the other hand I find on a variety of sites around the Internet where fans who can intelligently talk about issues that go much deeper than Brady vs. Tebow but about the impact of losing an offensive line coach or the lack of blocking issues from a tight end.

I doubt that the new show will dig down to this level of detail since those topics are not controversial, but it does open the door to more fan interactivity on sports shows. In the past it seemed that the only interaction that ESPN and others had was the annoying Twitter feed at the bottom of the page. If I want to read a Twitter feed my TV is not the place I want to do so.

A quick look at some of the first topics offered for “Facebook Faceoff” include Tebow, Raiders and Tebow, coaching changes in Chicago (Paul did you submit that?) and should the Lions draft another cornerback or a left tackle. Not earth shattering but it is a start.

Just the start for social media
It seems that networks and even news sites are starting to embrace social media and the ability to interact instantaneously with fans. The growth and popularity of Twitter, especially among athletes is just one example.

ESPN struck Twitter gold earlier this week with its hour mostly devoted to Tim Tebow. The show was the most popular on Twitter during its broadcast and was picked up and rerun on several sites. We expect that ESPN will use that program as a template in the future to boost ratings during off-peak viewing times.

Another use of social; media is CBS Sports live “5th Quarter with Gary Danielson” chat which has been running after SEC football games. You do hear regional baseball broadcasts that also will answer select Twitter questions but it always seems canned. Maybe we will start seeing a segment in pregame and postgame shows that enables fans to directly interact with either athletes or the broadcasters as they talk with the athletes.

Filed Under: Athlete to Follow, CBS Sports, ESPN, Facebook, NFL, Tim Tebow, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

CBS Streaming Top Rated SEC Games this Weekend

November 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Broadcaster seeks to grow success from LSU vs Alabama Game

CBS Sports, coming off a very strong viewership of its live streaming broadcast of the LSU vs Alabama game several weeks ago is now touting its live streaming of the game between #3 Arkansas vs. #1 LSU as well as broadcasting the “Iron Bowl” between #2 Alabama and #24 Auburn.

The event will follow a familiar format for viewers that have experienced previous broadcasts from CBS Sports. The game will be broadcast live at CBSSports.Com/SECLive and for users of iPads, iPhones and iPod Touch I can be found by using the CBS Sports Mobile app.


The games between all of these top ranked teams has the extra incentive for the teams in they all compete in the same division and so that the winner will capture the SEC West Championship, a sure stepping stone to a top BCS Bowl game.

The LSU game will be played Friday, Nov. 25th at 2:30 ET while the Alabama/Auburn Iron Bowl game will be played Saturday, Nov.26th with a starting time of 3:30 ET. Both games will be followed by the “5th Quarter with Gary Danielson”, an interactive show that is available at cbssports.com/gary or can be followed on Twitter at @DanielsonCBS.

The LSU vs Alabama game, which pitted a #1 vs. #2 drew 214,560 viewers to its online broadcast earlier this month. The number includes an impressive 42,912 viewers who partook via a mobile device and the sites CBS Sports mobile app for Apple iOS devices.

While the game was touted as a game of the century, as if we don’t get on of those every year, it was a bit of a disappointment. Missed opportunities coupled with missed field goals left an unsatisfactory feeling for many fans.
Still CBS Sports said at the time that it believed it to be the biggest audience to watch college football on-line, although ESPN claims that it has the title from the National Championship game last year that was broadcast on ESPN3 and drew 690,000 viewers.

It will be very interesting to see how the attendance for this game compares to the first. All of the SEC fans that I know are among the most fanatical football fans I know. Yet the first game was not quite what it was billed to be in terms of scoring and excitement. Will the fact that so many are traveling this weekend spur additional mobile viewership or will it detract? Just have to wait until Monday to see the numbers from CBS to see how it pans out. From there it would be nice to see this as a growing trend in the industry.

One question for fans of either LSU or Arkansas. Is the game still officially called “The Battle for the Golden Boot”? I did not see any mention of it this week.

Filed Under: Apps, CBS Sports, Fanatic Fans, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, NCAA Football, SEC Tagged With: , ,

Big Online Crowds Expected for CBS Live Stream of LSU-Alabama Matchup

November 3, 2011 by 6 Comments

Live broadcast of College’s #1 vs #2 could change the market.

One of the biggest college football games of the year, regular season edition, is coming this weekend in the LSU-Auburn matchup, and in a sign of the growing importance of presenting sports in all mediums it will be available as streaming media from an online source.

In addition to presenting the game on regular broadcast television, CBS is pulling out all the stops by not just putting the game live online, but also by beefing up its social-media efforts, soliciting fan reactions both prior to and after the Saturday contest.

CBSSports.Com has said that it will be streaming the game that pits No. 1 LSU versus No. 2 Alabama, with the game being presented at CBSSports.com/SECLive. The live streaming video is also available via the Internet to iPhone and iPad users who have downloaded the free CBS Sports app available at cbssports.com/mobile.

Fans can comment online and send tweets while watching from a computer or an iOS device

The broadcast is the centerpiece of CBSSports’ aggressive weeklong coverage of the matchup. That included daily coverage at the Alabama/LSU Central page or the CBSSports.com’s Eye on College Football Blog.

CBSSports has streamed SEC games in the past as well as conference championships on both its website and to iOS devices, with an audience that hovers around six figures — but this is different. Jason Kint, senior vice president and general manager of CBSSports.Com told Fierceonlinevideo.com thats “It’s the biggest football game across all platforms,” and added that he sees this event as a breakthrough for streaming media.

While over the years many big matchups have been touted by the networks only to have them come up short, CBS is playing this one like it could be a preview of the BCS Championship game. The amped-up buildup, plus the stature of the SEC (and its five consecutive BCS championships) should make this online broadcast a far cry from the ho-hum acceptance that many streaming events have received in the past.

Second tier Olympics events, often broadcast at odd hours have garnered little attention and even smaller audiences and have in some ways turned people off to using mobile and handheld devices for watching sporting events, although MLB.com and the NFL have been aggressively pushing out into some segments of this market.

CBSSports will not stop its coverage with the game but will also have its usual postgame show, “5th Quarter with Gary Danielson” as an interactive afterparty. This site can be found at cbssports.com/gary.

Filed Under: Apps, CBS Sports, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, NCAA Football Tagged With: , , , ,
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