Selection show has new look

Published 12:00 am Sunday, March 11, 2018

Sunday’s edition of the “March Madness Selection Show,” the annual unveiling of the 68 men’s basketball teams that made the NCAA Tournament and the brackets in which they will play, will have a new look, as well as a new home.

For the first time, the show will be televised on TBS instead of its longtime home, CBS, beginning at 3 p.m. Pacific time. (Turner, the TBS parent company, and CBS share the rights to the tournament.) Turner designed a new studio on its Atlanta campus for the show, which will have a live audience this year — one of a number of significant changes to the show’s format.

The 2016 selection show, on CBS, was widely viewed as a debacle. Expanded to two hours, the show slow-played the reveal of the bracket. Even worse, the correct bracket leaked online before the show began. Last year, a chastened CBS cut the show back to 90 minutes and moved quickly to unveil the matchups.

Turner will handle things differently. All 68 tournament teams will be revealed within the first 10 minutes of the two-hour show, and the full regional brackets will be shown over the next half-hour.

— The New York Times

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