NCAA men’s tournament ratings rise slightly

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

The folks at the Nielsen Wire who keep track of television ratings of all kind send out interesting bits of information all the time. Today they’ve let us know that the average household rating for this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament is 5.3%, up a bit from 5.2% last year.

The most-watched session (pod of games that CBS puts on at the same time in the early rounds) was on March 22 around 2 p.m. PT when an average of 11.2 million viewers were watching down-to-the-wire finishes of Michigan State-USC, Marquette-Missouri and Louisville-Siena. It just goes to show that word always gets out when the games are close and the stakes are high. Overall, an average of 9.6 million watched the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games, the most since 2006.

Oh, and I was rooting for three teams in those three games. Yep, went 0-3.

-- Diane Pucin