Media Influence in March Madness

In my March 22nd American Sport in the 21st Century class we discussed the relationship between sport and the media.  We talked about how closely related the two entities are, and once again I found myself thinking about the Men's NCAA basketball tournament and how it is related to a lot of the topics we discussed in class.  Here is a link to the article on CBS' widely popular selection show for the tournament, that I pulled the following connections from.


http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2016/03/14/In-Depth/Selection-Show.aspx

The first connection that I made was regarding stereotypical ideologies in the media and it is not directly mentioned in the article and required thinking about the scope of the basketball landscape, and that's the point.  The selection show that CBS has for the Men's tournament is 2 hours long, and features tons of analysis and predictions based on the match ups that are revealed.  I would be hard pressed to find any sport programming on the women's tournament that lasts more than 30 minutes.  This demonstrates the extreme favoritism of male sports in America.  The second connection that I made was the role of the media that focuses a huge amount on entertainment and advertisement.  When CBS started their selection show, in 1980, it was 30 minutes long and now in 2016 it is 2 hours long.  Why?  Because the demand and interest in the tournament kept getting larger and larger over time, and with the growing popularity CBS turned the show into more than just announcing the bracket.  They added an extra hour an a half of in depth analysis to give viewers more information for selecting teams when they fill out their own brackets, and because of the amount of eyeballs watching this show CBS is able to make a huge amount of money selling advertising.  The last connection that I made was that commercial sport depends on the media.  When we talked about this in class we posed the question, "Has commercial sports sold out to the media?"  By the expansion of the selection shows I think that answer is yes.  Also, the fact the we call it "commercial" sport I think immediately means yes because they need the media to sell their product.  The bottom line is sports and the media have a mutually beneficial relationship, and in most cases sport needs the media more than the media needs sport.

Colin Cowherd hosts a national radio show on Fox Sports 1 and did a great job of outlining the media's influence in an event like March Madness, video below: