Ratings Roundup: Villanova/UVA, More College Hoops, NBA on Nat'l TV

Villanova’s last-second win drove FOX to its second-best college basketball audience. In other news, CBS had mixed numbers for its college hoops action over the weekend, and the NBA bookended the weekend with mixed results of its own.

Villanova’s last-second win over Virginia earned a 1.1 final rating and 1.7 million viewers on FOX Saturday, trailing only Duke/St. John’s in January 2015 (1.4, 2.0M) as the highest rated and most-watched college basketball game ever on the Fox Sports family of networks. Compared to Villanova/St. John’s on the comparable day of last season, ratings increased 83% from 0.6 and viewership 89% from 876,000. Even with the stronger performance, the game trailed Michigan/Michigan State on CBS head-to-head (1.2, 1.9M). Airing immediately afterward, Washington/Arizona had a 0.7 and 1.1 million.

As mentioned above, CBS scored a 1.2 final rating and 1.9 million viewers for Michigan/Michigan State Sunday afternoon — down 14% in ratings and 7% in viewership from Maryland/Ohio State last year (1.4, 2.1M) and down 20% in the latter from Michigan/Michigan State in 2015, ratings for which were unavailable (2.4M). Despite the drop, the game delivered the tenth-largest college basketball audience of the season. In other action on CBS, ratings increased 19% (from 0.80 to 0.95) and viewership 28% (from 1.1M to 1.4M) for North Carolina/Miami the previous day.

Rockets/Sixers scored a 1.0 final rating and 1.5 million viewers on the latest edition of ESPN’s NBA Friday, up 11% in ratings and 29% in viewership from Mavericks/Heat two years ago (0.9, 1.2M). There was no comparable game last year. On Monday, TNT scored just 1.1 million for Pistons/Celtics and 860,000 for Grizzlies/Suns. The latter was the 12th NBA game this season with fewer than one million viewers, matching last year’s full-season total. Keep in mind there have there have been nine more nationally televised games so far this season than at the same point last year.