CSTV Article

[Baltimore Shooter]

Did someone say they had troubel getting paud from CSTV and wondering if they were still in business? Looks like they are still going. Here's an article from Medialifemagazine.com:

So let the games begin, now on CSTV

College sports network airs its first tourney game
By Diego Vasquez
Mar 15, 2007

Four years ago, CSTV launched just minutes after the NCAA men’s college basketball championship game ended, offering a wrap up of the contest and introducing a new brand of sports channel, one aimed at college sports fans.

In the time since, Fox and ESPN have both launched university-focused sports networks and CSTV was acquired by CBS.

Since its launch, NCAA basketball coverage has remained one of CSTV’s most popular offerings, and today the network will finally air its first tournament game at 4:55 p.m., when No. 6 seed Vanderbilt and No. 11 George Washington square off.

That will be followed by another first-round game tomorrow between No. 4 Virginia and No. 13 Albany, and presumably more in the coming years should this experiment do well.

CBS has been looking for new ways to monetize March Madness, which tips off today at noon on the network. Last year it launched a highly successful free, ad-supported March Madness on Demand program online, providing live coverage of all tourney games. This year it more than doubled last year’s ad sales for the project, which served more than 19 million streams.

The 2005 acquisition of CSTV gave CBS a cable partner it lacked after splitting with Viacom, and the ability to give greater visibility to games that are getting minor coverage on CBS itself is a big bonus. CBS airs every first-round game, but all the games are regional coverage, meaning West Coast cities see mostly West Coast teams.

The Vandy-GW game, for example, will air concurrently on CSTV and CBS but only in 6 percent of the latter’s coverage area.
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Link here - http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_10785.asp

Warren

[dhart]

Up here in the Midwest, the Big Ten Conference recently announced: ta, da "The Big Ten Channel". My understanding is that it will carry most Big Ten sporting events. Not sure how that effects current contracts with the networks. But as they come up for renewal I suspect they will end.

I think the trend, with tens of thousands of TV "channels" available, is that the entity who creates the content is going to cut the middle man out and deliver that content directly to the audience. Thus getting more of the money. We'll see how this all works out. They have hired an experienced production and marketing team out of Chicago to implement.

[Nino]

Warren, I do a few jobs a year for CSTV, they hire me mostly to do full set-up interviews. Never had any problem getting paid and they pay quickly. You don’t have to worry about them; most of their acquisition is on mini-DV or DVCam.