March Madness
ratings hold for CBS
Down 2 percent from last year, averaging a 5.3
By Toni Fitzgerald
Mar 23, 2010
The big story of this NCAA tournament thus far has been the stunning number of upsets. Four teams seeded ninth or lower made the Sweet Sixteen, a year after a remarkably staid tournament in which the 12 top-seeded teams made the Sweet Sixteen for the first time ever.
It's not clear whether the parade of Cinderellas entering next week's third round will help or hurt ratings, which have been a mixed bag for CBS so far, with TV ratings down slightly but March Madness on Demand viewing once again way up.
CBS has averaged a 5.3 overnight household rating, according to Nielsen, for all 15 of its coverage windows on Thursday through Sunday, including all primetime and afternoon games.
That's off a slight 2 percent from last year, when the two opening rounds averaged a 5.4 rating on CBS. The network has seen some improvements, with Thursday's primetime block up very slightly over last year.
But the real gains have been online. On Thursday, the only full day available so far, MMOD got off to its best start yet, with 3 million unique viewers, up 11 percent over 2009.
Some 3.4 million hours of audio and video were streamed, 20 percent better than last year.
Those were both records for online sports streaming on the web, according to CBS.
The most-watched game, not surprisingly, was BYU's win over Florida, which came in double overtime and attracted 521,000 hours of streams.
CBS had already predicted that ad revenue for MMOD would rise this year, as well as viewing, as it has every year since its 2006 launch.
People are becoming more accustomed to looking for video online, and CBS has promoted the heck out of it, even using famed cubicle icon Dilbert this year as part of its so-called "boss button," which hides the streaming video with a click of the mouse.
Whether TV ratings rebound will largely depend on how viewers respond to the plethora of low-seeded teams who will play in Thursday and Friday's third round.
Though there's always much talk of Cinderella teams at this time of year, those don't actually generate strong ratings.
The year that George Mason became the lowest-seeded squad to make the Final Four, for example, ratings were down for the whole tournament. The problem is that once viewers' brackets get busted and they have no chance of winning the office pool, they usually lose interest in the tourney.
But perhaps the sheer number of Cinderellas and their chance at NCAA history will reverse that trend. If all four of the teams seeded ninth or lower win, fully half of the Elite Eight will be squads that were very, very low odds to even make it out of round one.
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