March Madness comes to YouTube

by Thelma Jesselman | March 16, 2007 at 07:28 am

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Ok I know that some of my Nowpublican friends are going to be quite shocked that I am as mad as a hatter over March Madness and the championships but here in Parhump, NV I don't get much chance to see basketball so I am glued to my TV set and now, hooray! I can watch on You Tube, have you heard of it? I could not get to understand You Tube until Morni my next door neighbor showed me a funny clip thing about a dancing baby. Then Morni's son Morgan who is all the way at Rutgers came home for spring break and showed the You Tube sports stuff. So I thought do a Nowpublic story about this thing I just found about CBS and basketball. So as Morgan says, this is so fat.

Mark this day, March 15, 2007, the first day of the NCAA Men's College Basketball tournament, in the history books. I gave CBS’s March Madness on Demand (MMOD) a long look today, and I’ll be the first to say it: Thank you, CBS! I can’t remember a free internet application that surpassed all hopes and delivered beyond expectations quite so much. Actually, scratch that. I can’t remember anything free that gave the goods as well as MMOD.

College basketball fans will be able to view highlights and game clips from March Madness they happen----on YouTube. The partnership is sponsored by Pontiac, a division of GM(NYSE:GM), and makes CBS (NYSE:CBS)one of the first companies to actively partner with YouTube in offering content, while Viacom has chosen the litigation route. Which is the right way to go?

In investing there is an old adage that I happen not to agree with but, in this case, it applies: Don't fight the trend. The offering of content on sites like YouTube will, in some form or other, be the wave of the future. In gaining a sponsorship from Pontiac, CBS has found a way to profit from piracy: with or without their consent, clips from March Madness were going to show up on YouTube (although probably not in real-time).