Earlier this week CBS announced that its CSTV network would be rebranded as “CBS College Sports”. This follows up on last years rebranding of Sportsline.com as CBSSports.com. One thing seems to be missing from this picture. Where’s the radio integration?
ESPN, Fox Sports, and Sporting News promote their radio networks and personalities heavily on their sites. Sports Illustrated is integrating Dan Patrick’s program into its FanNation.com. However, a glance at CBSSports.com features nothing from any of CBS’ radio portfolio. And with the exception of a score ticker on a couple sites, there is no mention of CBSSports.com anywhere on these stations sites
CBS has nine all-sports stations covering many Major League markets, along with a few sports programs on other market programs? There’s no money to be made from a section on CBSSports.com featuring the content of WFAN’s Mike & The Mad Dog, WSCR’s Mike North, WJFK’s Junkies, WFNZ’s Mark Packer, and that doesn’t even mention the fanaticism of Philadelphia’s WIP.
Many of these stations have begun personality blogs and offering podcasts of segments of their shows online, wouldn’t a national repository of this content bring more eyes and ears to this content and potentially expose more listeners to these stations and more viewers to CBSSports.com? Seems like an easy piece of vertical integration between two divisions of one company.