TV Ratings: March Madness Draws Viewers

Through the first five days of NCAA “March Madness” averaged 9.0 million Nielsen-measured across CBS, TBS, TNT, and TruTV, according to the NCAA -- the best results ever for the tournament over that period, reports MediaPost. 

Thursday's first-round game average of 8.5 million viewers was up 1% from a year ago (8.4 million) -- the most-watched opening day of the first round since 2015. Friday's average was down 7% to 8.6 million viewers (second most ever for a Friday) 

Saturday's night games averaged 10.8 million, which was the best viewership for the first day of the second round ever.

The most-viewed first-round games include the Thursday upset win by Oakland over Kentucky averaging 6.2 million viewers and Friday's upset win by James Madison over Wisconsin (5.2 million).

From March 20 through March 24, total impressions for four networks were up 8% to 14.2 billion from the year before, according to EDO Ad EnGage.

Meanwhile, Fox News beat the full-court press of TBS and TNT’s coverage of the March Madness college basketball tournament to top cable’s primetime chart for the 10th straight week, nexttv reports.

Fox News averaged 1.9 million viewers in primetime for the week of March 18-24, topping second place TBS’ 1.7 million viewers and TNT’s 1.4 million viewers, according to Nielsen numbers supplied by Fox News.

MSNBC finished in fourth place with 1.2 million viewers, followed by March Madness-infused TruTV’s 1 million watchers. ESPN was sixth for the week with 815,000 viewers, followed by HGTV (773,000 viewers), History (732,000), Hallmark Channel (639,000) and INSP (615,000).

Fox News led all networks on a total day basis with 1.2 million viewers, followed by MSNBC (816,000 viewers), TBS (642,000), TNT (587,000) and ESPN (473,000), said Nielsen.