NCAA Tournament Media Watch

The NCAA tournament may be chalk to this point. Advertising money may not have been flowing quite so easily. CBS, though, can take some solace that the NCAA tournament is getting plenty of eyeballs over the air and online.

According to CBS Sports, the TV ratings for the first two rounds are up six percent from last year while the online viewing is up a whopping 60 percent with some 5.6 million unique visitors. The amount of time people spent watching the games online is also up nearly 71 percent from last year.

'HouseCast is FanHouse's podcast. Watch out. Or you might just get what you're after.

Can you take any more March Madness inundated into your domepiece? Of course you can. It's the number one reason why you keep coming back to FanHouse's NCAA Tournament Coverage, and it's definitely the reason why you were waiting, desperately, of course, for the second half of FanHouse's NCAA Podcastactular.

In 6.2, Ryan Wilson and Will Brinson chat with FH's own Eamonn Brennan (who moonlights on the very, mucho excellente college basketball blog The Dagger) about nostalgic brackets, hating on North Carolina or Duke, sleepers, whether you should fill out a single bracket or not, and a myriad of other college basketball topics.

Hit the jump to listen to the whole thing in our embeddable player.

CBS has held the television rights to the NCAA Tournament since 1982. CBS has paid handsomely for them over the years. The most recent extension was for $6 billion over 11 years that runs through 2013.

CBS smartly included digital media rights -- which includes the streaming of the games over the internet. This has created a new revenue stream for CBS. And as it has invested in and improved the live streams, CBS has seen its ad revenue grow from it. This year, CBS expects ad revenue from the online streaming to be around $30 million, an almost 30 percent increase from last year in spite of the recession.

March Madness is heating up, so if Bob Knight is on ESPN talking about athletes who have impressed him, he must be talking about college basketball players, right? Not quite. In an appearance on ESPN Wednesday, Knight said that, in reality, he believes the best athletes in the country right now are not American basketball players but a visiting troupe of Russian skaters.

Like millions of Americans, President Obama spent a few minutes this week filling out his NCAA Tournament bracket.

Burning Down the 'House is FanHouse's podcast. Watch out. Or you might just get what you're after.

FanHouse brings the podcast pain once again this week with a focus on, well, what else but the NCAA Tournament? On Tuesday's episode, Will Brinson, Michael David Smith, and Ryan Wilson are joined by ESPN's own college basketball expert and radio host, Doug Gottlieb (old-school shot of Doug in the middle, above). It's obviously one of his busiest times of the year, so we were thrilled to talk college hoops with him for nearly 30 minutes.

Hit the jump for downloadable segments, or to listen to the whole thing in our embeddable player.

While General Motors did not give up its commitment to television advertising for the NCAA Tournament, it is not going to make the same commitment to on-site advertising and promotion at the NCAA Tournament. Even with the Final Four set to play in the automaker's city, mere blocks from their corporate headquarters.

Everything from dealer-incentive trips to the Final Four, to billboards around the site locations are being slashed or eliminated. GM estimates they will spend at least 60% less than they did the year before on that aspect.

When ESPN hired Bob Knight as a college basketball analyst, some questioned whether the coach with the legendary temper would be able to work as a TV commentator without dropping any four-letter words.