Sane "Madness"
By Robert Goldrich
Reaching a maximum audience of several hundred thousand at a time hardly seems like nirvana for mass marketers. But 18 major advertisers–including Pontiac, Dell and Marriott–have shrewdly embraced that opportunity when it was offered by CBS.
The eye network is making the early round games of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) basketball championship tournament available on the Web for free. The games, which have spawned bracketology “science” and office betting pools throughout the country, represent a hot ticket. And it’s safe to say that college basketball fans, as well as office worker “Final Four” pool players, will have a keen interest in accessing the action–via CBS’ national telecasts (available in HD), and over the Internet.
In fact for the initial weekday morning and afternoon round of games, look for office productivity to go down as workers keep an eye peeled on their computer screens for live, Web-delivered games. Further aiding and abetting this down time at the office is a button that Web viewers can click to instantly replace the games with a fake spreadsheet–that way the boss will be none the wiser about employees slacking off to keep tabs on the NCAA tournament.
All the available ad slots have been sold in this precedent-setting Web event, which marks the first time that a mainstay national broadcaster has shifted such a valuable, exclusive program franchise onto the Web without charging a fee. The college basketball tournament has long been known as March Madness–hence the Internet service name of March Madness On Demand for the CBS initiative.
Ads will be removed from the TV broadcast and replaced with Web-only commercials sold by CBS Sportsline, which is a unit of CBS Digital Media. The Web service will not feature the Elite Eight, Final Four or championship rounds when there’s only one game at a time. Additionally, Web users won’t be able to access local games even in the early rounds when multiple games are being played simultaneously. This is all designed to protect the core TV broadcast business.
It’s estimated that broadband capacity will limit the Web audience to a few hundred thousand viewers at a given time. The service is available at ncaasports.com/mmod and could pave the way for other Web broadcasts.
The March Madness on Demand for no charge underscores how mainstream entertainment companies are grappling with ways to leverage emerging media, while creating desirable outlets for their audience constituencies and advertisers. It’s believed that the companies advertising on the Web games will for the most part make their spots interactive as they attempt to engage prospective consumers and gauge how much interest those commercials generate.
In a Los Angeles Times article about March Madness on Demand, Deborah S. Fell, a Marriott senior VP is quoted as saying, “It’s a cluttered landscape out there in terms of getting information to consumers. This is the type of venue we’re looking for.”
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More