CBS Hoping to Bounce Back With Basketball : Television: After a $55-million loss on baseball coverage, the network looks to the NCAA tournament for a net gain.

CBS, which last month took a $55-million after-tax loss for its baseball playoff and World Series coverage last year, figures to do far better with the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, which begins today.

CBS has scheduled a record 65 hours of coverage, up from 47 hours last year. Action begins at 9 a.m. today with Duke facing Northeastern Louisiana on Channels 2 and 8. Games also will air at 11:30 a.m. and at 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. There will be four more games Friday and three on Saturday and Sunday, followed by prime-time coverage of the regional semifinals March 21-22, telecasts of the regional finals March 23-24, the Final Four double-header March 30 and the national championship game April 1.

CBS Sports President Neal Pilson would not disclose the specifics of how advertising sales are going for the tournament, but expressed satisfaction with them.

“The best way to characterize them is that, relative to the marketplace, we’re pleased with our results,” Pilson said. “It’s no secret that the marketplace has been very soft for all television, but the tournament has tracked very well.”

From an advertising viewpoint, the NCAA tournament has an advantage over the World Series because it has a guaranteed number of games, while the World Series can run from four to seven outings. The Cincinnati Reds’ unexpected four-game sweep of the Oakland Athletics last fall cost the network an estimated $12 million to $15 million for each game not played. The American League playoffs also went only four games and similarly reduced CBS’ potential income.

Besides its $55-million loss, CBS also took a $115-million charge against earnings in the fourth quarter for baseball losses during the remaining three years of its $1.06-billion contract with Major League Baseball.

CBS reportedly paid another $1 billion for rights to the NCAA basketball tournament for seven years, prompting derision from NBC Sports President Dick Ebersol, who gleefully maintained before a gathering of television reporters in January that CBS paid too much for that too.

“In terms of growth of the tournament, and where we expect the tournament to be seven years from now, we have made a very supportable investment,” Pilson countered. “We’re comfortable with it. We see the tournament as one of the few growth properties in sports that has not yet peaked in terms of interest to both viewers and advertisers.”

John Reidy, a media analyst with the investment firm Smith Barney, agreed that CBS should not suffer economically with the NCAA tournament as it did with baseball.

“This is one of most proven sports products out there,” Reidy said. “It typically does better than the NBA because you’ve got so much individual performance and so much surprise.”

He estimated that CBS’ profits on the tournament last year were in excess of $25 million. Because this is the first year of a new, more expensive contract, he said that profits are likely to be only marginal, but that should improve over the course of the contract as ad rates escalate.

The new contract gives CBS exclusive rights to the tournament, which accounts for the larger number of hours it is devoting to the event. ESPN had broadcast some first-round games since 1980.

Although stopping short of offering a projection, Pilson does not expect “dramatic” ratings for CBS’ daytime games.

“We think an event like this finds an audience,” he said. “Certainly, the same people who watched it on ESPN will watch it on CBS, plus a substantial additional number of people who don’t get ESPN.”

ABC, meanwhile, has taken out ads in TV Guide, Soap Opera Digest and National Enquirer chiding CBS for pulling its soap operas in favor of basketball and inviting people to sample its daytime fare.

NBC has targeted CBS in prime time on April 1, the night of the championship game. In the Eastern and Central time zones, NBC has scheduled “Changes,” a new made-for-TV movie based on a romantic novel by Danielle Steel, against the basketball contest. (In the Pacific time zone, that game will be seen live from 6-8 p.m., where its competition will come from local and network news and various syndicated programming.)

NBC found ratings success by counterprogramming another adaptation of a Steel novel against the World Series. With its strong appeal to women--especially those looking for an alternative to sports--”Fine Things” was seen in about 16.7 million households, while the opening game of the World Series was watched in about 18.8 million.

“I’m amused by NBC’s strategy of taking expensive programming and putting it against CBS sports events,” Pilson said. “If NBC had saved that programing they played against the World Series and saved it for the sweeps, they might have done better. I’m not sure that’s the best strategy, but if that’s what Mr. (NBC Entertainment Group Chairman Brandon) Tartikoff wants to do, I guess he’s free to do it. It doesn’t create concerns for us.”