Traffic for CBS's March Madness On Demand Up Substantially from Last Year

CBS on Tuesday released traffic statistics for March Madness on Demand (MMOD), the broadband video service it offers for the annual NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship. According to the broadcaster:

• 11.7 million hours of live streaming video and audio (up 36% compared to last year) were consumed by 8.3 million unique visitors (up 10% from last year) to the NCAA MMOD video player. By way of comparison, ratings for CBS Sports' TV coverage of the tournament were up 5% over last year.
• 575,000 unique visitors (up 70% from last year) watched the tournament's final game, which was between Duke and Butler, on the NCAA MMOD video player, and consumed 368,000 hours of live streaming video (up 72% from last year). Ratings for CBS Sports' TV coverage of the game were up 34% from last year.
• The NCAA MMOD "Boss Button" (lets viewers watching the tournament from work instantly pull up a spreadsheet- or PowerPoint-like page designed to make their boss think that they are working rather than watching basketball on the company dime; this year, the page was designed by "Dilbert" creator, Scott Adams) was clicked 3.94 million times, up 42% from last year.

NCAA MMOD, which is offered free of charge (this year's presenting sponsors were AT&T, Capital One and Coca-Cola), provides live streaming video of all 63 games in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship.

In related news: Canadian cable channel, Score Media, has secured a deal with the National Hockey League to offer streaming game highlights, live in-game blogging and chat, on Score's recently revamped Web site, according to an article in the Hollywood Reporter. The publication reports that "as Score Media adds online highlights content to its Web site, the broadcaster will have New York City-based ad rep, Canadian Television Sales, connecting domestic advertisers with the broadcaster's online and mobile viewers during the NHL championship rounds."