National Sports Journalism Center

The news struck sports fans last week like a thunderbolt: for help with the $10.8-billion price tag, CBS will share telecast of the NCAA tournament games over 14 years with three cable channels in the Turner Broadcasting family.

Look close, and you can see the start of a new era in sports broadcasting. And not just because, at long last, the deep pockets and oversized egos at ESPN came up short bidding for a major event.

As details of the arrangements emerge beyond the expansion to 68 teams, the landmark deal seems to presage some important things about sports, television and the way both subjects will interact with each other in the years to come.

Observation No. 1: Big sporting events have gotten bigger than even network TV can handle. The oft-cited reason for CBS’ decision to bring in Turner was the immense cost of continuing the Eye Network’s 29-year history of airing the NCAA tourney.

Already, critics have carped about NBC losing money on its most-watched programming of the year, the Winter Olympics, simply because sports executives had to pay so much to get it (frankly, given NBC’s fourth-place and flagging status, the value of having two weeks of buzzed-about sports programming to put increasing distance between its decision to put Jay Leno in prime time and yank him out again was priceless).

Looking down the barrel of an average annual cost of more than $770-million a year, ratings-leading CBS faced a different equation. As important as such sporting events are to their prestige and programming portfolio, they didn’t need the ratings boost enough to lose that kind of money.

Enter Turner and its signature channels TBS, TNT and TruTV (formerly, CourtTV). Backed with the extra cash flow of a major cable outlet – they make money from both subscriber fees and commercials – Turner could cover the costs while providing the platform for a dizzying array of games.

If published reports are accurate, CBS’ end could be capped at less than $700-million over the entire deal — an important move for a platform where profits have been shrinking as of late.

Observation #2: As broadcast networks become more like cable, cable grows more like broadcasters: Big as Turner’s deal is, it was the company’s second headline-grabbing announcement of the year, following news that TBS would back up a much smaller money truck to get former Tonight Show host Conan O’Brien to take over its 11 p.m. timeslot rather than dicker with Fox.

While broadcast networks struggle to balance a full week’s worth of programming on an economic model that’s sinking fast, cable channels once seen as focused diversions to the overly broad fare on the networks are getting pretty broad themselves.

Sports has become a major part of that transformation, with cable channels offering the shelf space and pocketbooks to feature multiple nights of popular contests, while broadcasters must shoehorn the biggest events into their relatively limited programming openings.

If rights fees keep rising a tipping point will come soon – you can only raise cable fees so high. But for now, the partnerships are working out.

Observation #3: Sports fans increasingly will pay directly for the privilege of watching their favorite games on TV. When a broadcaster pays more for the rights to an important sporting event, the cost is passed to advertisers, who wind up shelling out $3-million for 30-second Super Bowl commercials.

But this 61 percent hike in fees for the next 14 years of NCAA competition will pass more directly to cable subscribers. First, Turner will hike its fees to cable companies for carrying their channels, reasoning that the NCAA basketball games (and O’Brien’s show) makes the programming more valuable; such charges eventually will find their way to subscribers’ cable bills through incrementally rising charges.

So fans better hope the NCAA board of directors votes Thursday to go along with the expanded, 68-team field. Because sports fans deserve maximum bang for their buck if they’re paying the association’s tab more directly.

Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the St. Petersburg Times and a 1990 graduate of the Indiana University School of Journalism. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, VIBE magazine, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed, at blogs.tampabay.com/media.