The Southern Ontario/WNY Radio-TV Forum / March Madness Leaving Big Hole In Global’s Primetime Plans

**Posted by RadioActive** March 19, 2025 7:32 am

It’s going to be a bit of a reroll few weeks for those Canadian stations that normally simulcast shows that air on CBS. The Eye Network is about to get enmeshed in March Madness, devoting night after night of primetime to the annual College Basketball tourney. All the games are airing on CBS.

So what happens to the Canadian networks that take shows like “Ghosts,” “Elsbeth,” “Matlock,” “Survivor,” the “NCIS’s” and all those FBIs? (Most of which air on Global.) It seems they’ll have to make do with reruns or alternate programming while the hoop-la is happening down the dial.

The tourney starts on CBS on Thursday and runs on and off during the primetime hours until the end of the month, followed by the Final Four on April 5th and the Championship game on April 7th. That’s a lot of hours for Global to try and fill. I’ll be curious to see how they handle it.

**Posted by paterson1** March 19, 2025 8:06 am

Had CBS not gone with March Madness basketball, they would likely have had a lot of repeats anyway for these shows. I am always shocked how many regular series have so many repeat shows now, when they didn't before.

Seems like late night talk only goes for 3 weeks of new programming, and then a week or more of repeated programming usually from the previous month. I recall we were talking about SNL maybe last year that had repeated programming only 3 or 4 weeks after the new season launch.

All of the networks are producing more limited series and shorter seasons for many shows to try and keep budgets under control. These shorter series are also run on the sister streamer service which tend to have fewer episodes per series. Streamer original productions are usually anywhere from 6-13 episodes for a "season." Watch for more of this on the traditional broadcast networks in the years ahead.

**Posted by mace** March 19, 2025 8:56 am

At one time, CBS broadcast the entire March Madness Tournament. This is no longer the case. Current broadcast rights fees are 891M per tournament. The games are now split between CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV. CBS still gets the Championship game.

**Posted by RadioActive** March 19, 2025 9:42 am

CBS is showing the games on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, as well as Thursday and Friday of the following week. That's five nights of primetime in the next two weeks, although Saturday is a bit of a loss leader since no network really bothers on that night anymore. Global is the one that will mostly have to fill that space.