Considering the amount of backlash Sunday’s expanded NCAA Tournament Selection Show generated online, ratings held up relatively well.
The NCAA Tournament Selection Show earned a 3.7 overnight rating on CBS Sunday afternoon, down 5% from last year (3.9), down 12% from 2014 (4.2), and the lowest overnight for the show since at least 1989. The previous low was last year’s 3.9, with the four lowest overnights coming in the past five years.
Sunday’s two-hour window was double the length of previous years. Given the bracket reveals account for perhaps 15 minutes of relevant content, the show featured a parade of filler that included touchscreen segments with Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley and Seth Davis.
While social media gripes are to be expected for just about any event with more than a handful of viewers, the slow pace of the reveals was so widely panned that the full bracket was eventually leaked on Twitter halfway through. According to CBS analyst Doug Gottlieb, the network had to speed up the announcement of the final two regions. Even though the brackets were spread across a whopping 77 minutes, per Sports Illustrated, there were still 43 minutes of garbage time to spare.
With all of that in mind, CBS can breathe a sigh of relief that the overnights were down only 5% — a small enough margin that the network could even chalk it up to the steady loss of interest in the Selection Show rather than poor decision making.
For the weekend, the Selection Show was the top sporting event on any network, edging NASCAR on FOX (3.6). The NASCAR event will almost certainly come out ahead in the final tally.
(Wknd. numbers via Sports Business Daily)
