Tournament teams will be revealed in 1st 10 minutes

NEW YORK — The 68 teams in the NCAA Tournament will be revealed in the first 10 minutes of the selection show Sunday, and then the brackets and pairings will be unveiled one region at a time.

CBS and Turner announced the tweak to the selection show format Tuesday. The show will be aired on TBS for the first time since CBS and Turner Sports began partnering on NCAA Tournament coverage in 2011. The two-hour show will come from a new studio in Atlanta, customized for the selection show and will be done in front of a live audience.

CBS and Turner executives said Tuesday the entire bracket will be revealed within the first 45 minutes. The new twist comes in the first 10 minutes when first the automatic bids will be announced in alphabetical order by conference. Then at-large selections will be revealed in alphabetical order by team. Greg Gumble and Ernie Johnson will co-host the selection show and handle the announcement of teams and matchups.

In 2016, CBS extended the selection show to two hours and was criticized by fans for taking too long to unveil the entire bracket. With that in mind, CBS and Turner executives looked at the move to TBS and Atlanta as an opportunity to make some changes.

“We’ve been talking about it for three years,” Craig Berry, executive vice president and chief content officer for Turner Sports, said during a media event with network executives and announcers. “We tried some new stuff two years ago, that took too long.

“And then, knowing we were going to move the selection show to TBS and to Atlanta, we felt like what an opportunity to kind of incrementally improve the show to some extent.”