After opening with a five-year low last year, this year’s NCAA Tournament got off to its third-best start in more than a quarter-century.
First round coverage of the NCAA Tournament averaged a combined 8.2 million viewers across CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV Thursday, up 4% from last year (7.9M) and behind only 2015 and 2014 (8.6M both years) as the most-watched opening day of the tournament since the current scheduling format began in 1991.
The early evening window was the top draw, grossing 10.3 million across the four networks — up 3% from last year (10.0M) but down 5% from 2015 (10.8M). It was the fourth-largest audience in the window dating back to 1993, behind 2015, 2014 (11.4M) and 2013 (11.1M). Villanova-St. Mary’s led the way with 4.2 million on CBS, followed by Xavier-Maryland with 2.9 million on TNT.
The late evening window followed with 9.6 million, down a fraction of a percent from last year (from 9.61M to 9.58M) and down 6% from 2015 (10.2M). Wisconsin-Virginia Tech was the top draw with 4.7 million on CBS, followed by Florida State-Florida Gulf Coast on TNT (2.3M).
The afternoon games pulled 5.6 million early (+4%) and 7.4 million late (+10%), ranking as the second and third-largest audiences in the respective windows since 1991.
In other action, USC-Providence scored 1.6 million viewers in Wednesday’s First Four on TruTV — down 25% from Michigan-Tulsa last year (2.2M) and down 3% from Dayton-Boise State in 2015 (1.7M). U.C. Davis-N.C. Central had 1.2 million earlier in the night, up 31% from Holy Cross-Southern last year (912K) and up 12% from Robert Morris-North Florida in 2015 (1.1M).
(Thu. numbers from CBS/Turner Sports; Wed. numbers via ShowBuzz Daily 3.17a, 3.17b)
