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Athens, GA (Jan 8, 2008) - CBS Sports and Sportsline were announced today as the winner of a Technical and Engineering Emmy (tm) for their production of "March Madness on Demand", "the online video experience that provides live streaming video of the NCAA(R) Division I Men's Basketball Championship."

As a whole, what they provided through this experience was very good for fans and a great product offering. As an added bonus, you could hear the on-air talent offering their unfiltered comments before the broadcast and during television commercials. But there was one glitch that really drove me crazy last year. I could not see the game online that I wanted because it was supposedly being offered on the television in my viewing market. Yes, the magical lines that do not always work when they do not come out the way they are intended. To illustrate this, let's go to the maps.

I live in Athens, GA, which is about 60 or so miles northeast of Atlanta:



Now we can start to muddy the picture, as there is a CBS affiliate in Atlanta and Toccoa, GA. Athens is considered to be a part of the Toccoa market:



Because we cannot get decent cable where we live, we have DirectTV, which provides local stations. Unfortunately, they have defined the local CBS affiliate for Athens to be the Atlanta Affiliate:



So the NCAA Tournament game I wanted to watch was not being broadcast on the Atlanta affiliate, but I was not worried since I could get it online. So I booted up my trusty IBM Thinkpad and connected to my wireless DSL connection to watch the game. Wrong! The game was blacked out on the Internet because it was being shown on the Toccoa affiliate. And I could not get that on my TV. So what did I get to see on the Internet?



So while its great that CBS got recognized for what they accomplished, it is a shame that all of the players in the new media marketplace cannot always get their acts together so the the unexpected blackout like this does not happen. The winner in this scenario? The pub where I went to watch the game.

Related Link(s)

CBSSports.com and CBS Sports Honored at the 59th Annual Engineering and Technology Emmy Awards