March 20, 2008
Making millions when the boss isn't looking
Free Web broadcasts of U.S. college basketball let CBS reach the sports fan at the office, and turned the Web-advertising model on its head. Grant Robertson writes for Globe and Mail.
"It's one of the fastest-growing, most lucrative departments at CBS Corp. right now. But the company's president, Les Moonves, has a far more blunt way to describe how the network has turned March Basketball basketball into an Internet gold mine.
"People sit at their computers and waste away their afternoons watching basketball games while their bosses are looking the other way," Mr. Moonves told analysts recently in New York.
When asked about the advertising dollars CBS expects this year from online broadcasts of the annual U.S. college tournament starting today, Mr. Moonves simply added: "We are having our best year, by far. Ever."
It started almost as a joke three years ago when CBS began offering the online games at no charge to see how many slackers at the office would tune in during the first two days of the competition.
The massive response in 2006 nearly bogged down the network's servers, proving the at-work audience for Web TV was formidable. Revenue surged from $250,000 (U.S.) the year before, when a subscription model was used, to about $4-million from advertising alone."
Related: Office madness.
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