CBS announced their March Madness results and it seems that at least in this contest, the underdog has triumphed. CBS made more per their online viewer than per their offline viewer (let’s say it together, NETWORK TV). Specifically CBS made a $44 CPM online and $42 offline.

A slim margin; but hey this isn’t Vegas we don’t play the spread, this is a real game and when time runs out it’s who is ahead that counts. Online is more valuable media. But we knew that.

As this scenario repeats itself over and over again in the coming year it will be greeted with shock and denial. The denials will be clothed as arguments that each instance is a special exception (there is nothing like March Madness). And the shock, well anyone who is shocked has been in a coma since 2004.

The online audience rates the bigger ticket because of their engagement and their accountability, no matter how imperfect our current metrics. Also and I know this shouldn’t count, but it really does. Consumers, fans, whatever you want to call people, are now reliant to live their lives on the 24/7, moving-in-real time ubiquity of the medium. You can make book on that attraction and it is that attraction that makes most other media irrelevant.

So it costs a little more…get used to it.

Bad news: newspaper circulation is down 9% for the 1st Quarter of 2008. Good news: the papers report online readership is up. Problem: online readers don’t have to pay for their online editions. Where will the money come from?

I should be sympathetic to the plight of the newspapers. I grew up reading The Washington Post every morning and The Washington Star most afternoons. As a little girl, my favorite part of Sunday mornings was curling up on my Dad’s lap with the “funnies.” Just writing this makes me feel very secure and loved.

Mine is a wonderful memory; but this is 2008. The hand writing has been on the wall for hard copy newspapers since 2002 and it’s inconceivable that intelligent people couldn’t read it. They have instead spent years clinging to beliefs in the power of newsprint and that the search for column C12 is easier than scrolling through an article or clicking on a small arrow.

That is the point. The online reading experience is much simpler and convenient than the hard copy. Moreover online news is completely up to the minute, not 24 hours old. The newspapers created these experiences and continue to perfect them.

What barrier did they imagine would stop people from using them? Why didn’t they come up with a monetization model for online a little earlier? Play with “the Long tail?” Explore localization technologies? Invite readers in?

Newspaper publishers want to blame independent bloggers and the like for the demise of their hard copy editions. That’s simply not fair. The newspapers themselves played a much bigger role than Adrianna Huffington. They blindly created their own replacements, but didn’t plan for the ultimate success of that creation. The strange assumption seems to have been that consumers had the time and inclination to support both sources of content.. They don’t- and video content producers should take note now.

I treasure my memories, but can’t mourn the loss of newsprint when something much better has replaced it. I just “pity the fool” who does.