Television
Easter lays egg for NCAA men's hoops
By Toni Fitzgerald
Mar 26, 2008 - 1:16:18 AM

Television usage slipped because of the holiday weekend, with people traveling and spending time with family on Easter, and CBS averaged a 4.8 household rating and 11 share for its Thursday through Sunday coverage, off 9 percent from a 5.3/12 last year.

This marked the first year that CBS has ever shown first-round games on Good Friday, with Easter falling on the earliest date since 1913. On Friday, households using television (HUT) levels slipped 2 percent from the previous week.

Television usage also saw a big dropoff on Easter Sunday, with all-day levels slipping 11 percent compared to the same day of the tournament last year.

Easter always pushes TV ratings down. Last year “Desperate Housewives” aired its lowest-rated episode ever on the holiday, and ratings for the Masters plunge when it’s held over Easter weekend.

In addition to the holiday, CBS faced another hurdle in game scheduling.

Top-seeded North Carolina, one of the most popular teams in the country, played its opener on Good Friday, and UConn, one of the biggest first-round upset victims, played at mid-afternoon, when many people were either at work or traveling.

Still, CBS did manage to win Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights among adults 18-49 with tournament coverage.

And the lower ratings for this year’s opening rounds hardly mean interest in March Madness is waning. Instead, some of it seems to simply have migrated. CBS’s online coverage of the tournament, March Madness on Demand, put up huge numbers over the weekend.

Through Sunday, MMOD was up 129 percent over last year, averaging 3.3 million unique visitors. By Saturday, the number of hours streamed by the service had already passed last year’s full tournament total of 2.7 million.

CBS had expected a jump because this year, for the first time, it eliminated the registration requirement for the free service. MMOD was also available via a variety of partners, including Facebook, YouTube, ESPN.com and Yahoo, which made it easy to find.

Finally, the online coverage may even have benefited from the holiday weekend in the same way it hurt TV as travelers away from home but close to their computers logged on to catch up with the games and their teams.

***

Meanwhile, in broadcast ratings for the week ended March 23:
 
Among adults 18-49, Fox was first with a 3.7 rating and a 10 share, followed by CBS at 3.0/9, ABC at 2.8/8, NBC at 2.1/6, Univision at 1.4/4, CW at 1.0/3, MyNetworkTV at 0.5/1, Telemundo at 0.4/1, TeleFutura at 0.3/1, and Ion and Azteca at 0.1/0.
 
Among adults 18-34, Fox led with a 3.0 rating and a 10 share, followed by CBS at 2.5/8, ABC at 2.2/7, Univision at 1.6/5, NBC at 1.4/4, CW at 1.1/3, Telemundo at 0.5/1, MyNetworkTV and Telefutura at 0.4/1, and Ion and Azteca at 0.1/0.
 
Among adults 25-54, Fox was first with a 4.2 rating and an 11 share, followed by CBS at 3.5/9, ABC at 3.4/9, NBC at 2.6/7, Univision at 1.4/4, CW at 1.0/2, MyNetworkTV at 0.5/1, Telemundo at 0.4/1, TeleFutura at 0.3/1, Ion at 0.2/0 and Azteca at 0.1/0.
 
Top five English-language Big Five shows (18-49s): 1. Fox’s “American Idol - Tuesday” 10.4; 2. Fox’s “American Idol - Wednesday” 9.8; 3. ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” 5.6; 4. CBS’s “Two and a Half Men” 5.4; 5. ABC’s “Lost” 4.6.
 
Top five English-language Big Five shows (total viewers): 1. Fox’s “American Idol - Tuesday” 27.34 million; 2. Fox’s “American Idol - Wednesday” 26.08 million; 3. ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” 21.15 million; 4. ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars 3/18” 17.02 million; 5. CBS’s “Two and a Half Men” 14.06 million.
 
Top five Live+7 English-language Big Five shows (households, week ended March 9): Fox’s “American Idol – Wednesday” 16.6; 2. Fox’s “American Idol - Tuesday” 16.5; 3. Fox’s “American Idol - Thursday” 15.5; 4. ABC’s “20/20: The Royal Family” 9.9; 5. Fox’s “The Moment of Truth” 9.1.
 
Top five Live+7 English-language Big Five shows (18-49s, week ended March 9): 1. Fox’s “American Idol - Tuesday” 10.6; 2. Fox’s “American Idol - Wednesday” 10.4; 3. Fox’s “American Idol - Thursday” 9.4; 4. Fox’s “The Moment of Truth” 6.1; 5. ABC’s “Lost” 5.4.
 
Show on the rise: “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” CBS, Monday 9:30 p.m. “Old Christine” predictably benefited from having an original “Two and a Half Men” as its lead-in, pulling a season-high 4.3 rating among viewers 18-49, up 26 percent from the previous week’s 3.4.
 
Show on the decline: “My Dad is Better than Your Dad,” NBC, Monday 8 p.m. “My Dad” suffered against the return of originals of CBS’s sitcoms as the reality show posted a series-low 1.4 rating among 18-49s, off 33 percent from a 2.1 the previous week.