Who’s making money off the NCAA Tournament on ESPN? ESPN is showing the games, but the ads are CBS ads. And how did the games get on ESPN in the first place, seeing as how ESPN is owned by ABC/Disney? Is ESPN actually losing money since its own programming and ads aren’t being shown?
Basically- due to war coverage and to fulfill its FCC requirement of serving the public interest, CBS moved its afternoon coverage to ESPN, which more than happily took it. The production was CBS, the announcers were CBS, but they were showing it on ESPN. Thursday evening, CBS showed the tourney with Dan Rather coming in every so often to give updates on what was going on.
IMHO, I think ESPN, as a partner of the NCAA, was happy to help out. They are already showing the Women’s Tournament, and this only helps ESPN (the ticker could advertise their programs, like Pardon the Interruption and Sportscenter, which would get higher ratings, which leads to higher ad revenue dollars in the future…)
Just my two cents.
Presumably ESPN received the revenue from the commercials, although a different rate may have been chaged since the ratings were presumably lower.