CBS Hopes March Madness Includes Crazy Story Line

(MoneyWatch)  No one is really sure how the term "March Madness" got associated with college basketball, so there's plenty of room for speculation.

Some claim Brent Musburger, the now 70-year-old sportscaster, was the first to use the phrase to describe the the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament back in the early '80s.

Others note, however, that way back in 1939, when the tournament originated, a high school official named H. V. Porter in basketball-crazed Illinois published an essay about the game called "March Madness."

People in the Midwest continued to refer mainly to high school basketball tournaments by this name until the late '70s, when the idea started going national.

Of course, the format for the tournament evolved as well, from eight teams to the present 65, but all of this only means the excitement over which squads will make the "Final Four" can be spread over that many more media markets than in the distant past -- when, of course, our dear old CBS* was not yet even a television network, but still confined to its national radio broadcasts.

As my colleague Cathy Taylor here at BNET Media has pointed out, CBS has at least five key new media opportunities to better monetize this year's Madness, including optimizing online advertising and distribution channels and launching an iPhone app.

But, in the end, the key for success for CBS lies back with the content, in whatever story lines develop in the games themselves. This is an area of programming where the narrative remains king -- who will be the Cinderella team this year, and how big are the alumni following of the teams it will face?

The crazier the arc the better so media execs are praying for some tiny school to go all the way to guarantee the highest possible TV and online audiences as the tournament progresses.

After all, everyone loves an underdog, especially the host of the party.

Disclosures: CBS owns BNET. And I used to cover Big Ten college basketball for UPI.