CBS

CBS Local Pages will provide businesses of all sizes the opportunity to be featured on CBS’s two dozen branded websites across the country and hundreds more through CityGrid, a local content and advertising network owned by IAC.

Following NBC, The CW and ABC, CBS on Monday revealed its own slate of season-enders.

Sources report that Richard Neal has been chosen to oversee the fight between Sheen, Warner Bros. and Two and a Half Men co-creator Chuck Lorre over Sheen’s firing from the hit CBS show.

A new, limited-edition flavor of Snapple is carrying the name of a TV show — CBS’s The Amazing Race — on its label, as well as being featured in show product placements and ads. The partnership also includes a co-branded contest hosted on Snapple’s Facebook site.

The network’s Sunday reality series are picked up for 19th and third seasons, respectively.

Last night’s NCAA regional semifinals, airing on CBS and TBS, scored big gains over last year, when the tourney aired only on CBS and the games were regionalized. Still, that wasn’t nearly enough to lift CBS to a win on the night. Fox’s American Idol rebounded from last week’s season low to average a 6.2 adults 18-49 rating at 8 p.m., up 9 percent week to week.

Age and sex don’t matter when it comes to TV ad effectiveness, said CBS Corp. chief research officer David Poltrack, who has teamed with Nielsen to create what he called a historic move to replace demographics with a new model for TV planning and buying, based on viewer behavior and attitudes.

Though CBS had its regular lineup in place, it wasn’t the network’s strongest night. The 9 p.m. drama NCIS: Los Angeles tied a series low with a 3.2 rating, and NCIS, the night’s highest-rated show with a 3.8 at 8 p.m., was flat to its last original episode despite facing a rerun of Glee, Fox’s top scripted show.

With her CBS Evening News contract about to expire, the news anchor considers her options at three different companies, conceivably playing roles within both syndication and news units.

For a second consecutive year, CBS will carry the Daytime Emmy Awards. The 38th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards will air live on the network on June 19 from the Las Vegas Hilton in Las Vegas, which also hosted the show last year. Also back is Associated Television International, which will be producing the telecast for a third consecutive year, with ATI president David McKenzie executive producing.

Parsing the performance of the NCAA tournament this year, with three networks carrying games in addition to CBS, will be complicated. Ratings for CBS, the sole carrier of the games for years, were down versus 2010. But measured collectively, the four networks carrying March Madness saw big gains over last year. In fact, they delivered the biggest start to the tournament in 20 years. CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV averaged a collective 5.7 household rating for more than 12 hours of game coverage yesterday, up 24% from a 4.6 last year, when only CBS had the games.

As the NCAA basketball tournament gets into fall swing today, over-the-air viewers and some affiliates are uphappy  with the new TV schedule, in which games are appearing on TNT, TBS and TruTV for the first time as well as CBS. Affils are disappointed that they no longer can pick games with local interest. “I think all hell is going to break lose,” says Tom Griesdorn, GM at WBNS Columbus, Ohio, which will not be showing Ohio State game. “In years past, viewers would just go to channel 10. It’s going to be interesting.”

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is already the second-most-lucrative sporting event on television each year, and this year it stands to gain yet more ad revenue. Jon Swallen, SVP of research at Kantar Media, talks about sold-out inventory, whether ad revenue will rise and why CBS took on a partner.

Although the eight-year-old show is aging and revolved around Charlie Sheen’s playboy character Charlie Harper, Warner Bros. Television and CBS have every incentive to try to keep it going after producers fired him on Monday. The show, for one, is a huge moneymaker: It is the most popular comedy on the air, and in syndication. But the more important question might be whether viewers will buy a remade show next fall.

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves said the company’s initiative to create online hubs in markets using the combined resources of its local TV and radio stations has a chance to out-compete local newspaper sites and Yellow Page directories.

The studio said the decision was made after “careful consideration” and that no decision has been made yet on the future of the series.

Be prepared to not find out who the mother of Ted’s kids is for another two years. CBS and How I Met Your Mother producer 20th Century Fox Television have closed a deal to pick up the relationship comedy from Carter Bays and Craig Thomas for two additional seasons, through May 2013.

The NFL and the players’ union decided Thursday to keep the current collective bargaining agreement in place for an additional 24 hours so that negotiations can continue.

Charlie Sheen might have tiger blood and Adonis DNA, but it’s far from clear whether the Two and a Half Men star would prevail in what seems like an inevitable legal showdown with CBS and Warner Bros. Television over who is to blame for the implosion of America’s most-watched sitcom. Many showbiz legal experts say they think he has a decent case, especially if reports are true that his deal with WBTV includes no morals clause.

U.S. District Judge David Doty on Tuesday overturned an earlier ruling and said the league’s TV contracts with CBS, NBC, ESPN, Fox and DirecTV — which allowed the NFL owners to still be paid a combined $4 billion in rights fees even if there were no NFL games next season — violated the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association. That’s a big win for the union and a blow to the league. But, winners and losers aside, the judge might have just equaled the playing field and hastened a settlement.

CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves told an investors conference in San Francisco on Tuesday that stopping production on the final eight episodes of this season’s Two and a Half Men is “financially a gainer.”

The troubled star appeared on dueling morning show interviews Monday on NBC and ABC to continue an attack on CBS and producers of his hit sitcom for shutting down the show because of his off-set behavior. NBC interviewer Jeff Rossen appeared taken aback when Sheen said he wanted to be paid $3 million an episode to return to the show. He’s reportedly paid $1.8 million an episode now, one of the highest-paid actors on television.

The Primetime Emmy Awards will continue to air on the four major broadcast networks with a new deal between the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox . The new pact, expected to close in about two weeks, is said to mirror tne TV Academy’s most recent agreement with the four networks.

By halting production on the eighth season of Two and a Half Men, CBS Corp. and   Warner Bros. are turning away from a proven hit with both viewers and advertisers.

In a one-sentence joint statement Thursday evening, the companies said they were ending production on television’s No. 1 sitcom for the season, a decision based on the “totality of Charlie Sheen’s statements, conduct and condition.” The move came following violence-tinged and anti-Semitic radio rant and letter from the troubled actor. The production halt leaves CBS eight episodes shy of the 24 half-hours it had expected to air.

Most new shows are expected to lose viewers in their second outing, but they’d prefer if the declines weren’t quite this steep. The second episode of CBS’s spinoff Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior averaged a 2.5 rating among viewers 18-49 in its 10 p.m. timeslot last night, off 24% from the 3.3 its premiere averaged last week.

Netflix and CBS aren’t disclosing terms of the deal they announced Tuesday, but an analyst said it’s worth $200 million. CBS will get that amount, according to a Wednesday research note from Barclays Capital analyst Anthony DiClemente, over two years for nonexclusive rights to stream such shows as The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Family Ties, Twin Peaks, Cheers and Frasier.