Big opening weekend
for March Madness
First three days average a 5.1 household rating
By Toni Fitzgerald
Mar 21, 2011
More networks are delivering more viewers for March Madness.
Through Saturday night, coverage of the NCAA men's basketball tournament was up 11 percent over last year.
CBS, TNT, TBS and truTV are averaging a 5.1 household rating, according to Nielsen, compared to a 4.6 last year, when the games were shown on only one network.
Among total viewers, the four networks are averaging 7.828 million viewers, up 12 percent over last year's 7.007 million.
Coverage peaked on Saturday, when viewers were actually home to enjoy the full day of basketball.
The four networks averaged a 5.9 rating, 9 percent better than last year's 5.4 for CBS, and 9.3 million total viewers, up 11 percent over last year's 8.4 million.
Ratings on CBS alone are down compared to last year, what with all the competing games, but that's certainly no surprise.
CBS teamed with Turner Networks for its NCAA bid last year in an effort to spread the financial burden, as the network had been losing money on the billion-dollar tourney for years.
This year marks the first time in tournament history that every game will be shown on television, and it seems there was a big appetite for the change.
Instead of being stuck watching a one-seed blow out a 16-seed, viewers have the option of switching channels to another game. That means that no one individual network will equal last year's ratings, when CBS regionalized the coverage.
But combined, the four networks are on pace for the best start to the tournament in years. Sunday's ratings will be out later today.
March Madness on Demand, the online streaming program that had been the only place to watch all the games up till this year, hasn't suffered.
On Thursday, visits to the site and mobile apps were up 22 percent over last year, to 7.6 million, delivering 3.3 million hours of live streaming video.
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