from TVWeek.com:
Monday night’s final matchup of this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament came in as the lowest-rated championship game ever.
Last night’s game, in which North Carolina beat Michigan State, drew a 10.8 household rating/18 share among households and 17.6 million viewers, according to final figures from Nielsen Media Research. This year’s final matchup was the lowest rated ever, down 11% from last year’s final game between Kansas and Memphis. This also marked the first time the household rating for an NCAA championship game fell below 11 points.
As Bill wrote in the overnight report, given the nature of the blowout, the results aren’t very surprising. But the news isn’t all bad for CBS and the NCAA. The overall coverage for the entire tournament on CBS averaged a 5.7/12 (household rating/share) and 8.9 million viewers this year, up 2% from last year’s all-time low average (excluding 2003 which coincided with the beginning of the war in Iraq).
I think a lot of this had to do with UNC just dominating from tip off. I watched the game for 15 minutes, and when UNC was up 22-8 I just changed channels. Also, last years game KU vs Memphis was exciting, and actually competitive unlike this game.
Doug, completely agree. Last night’s game was over fast, the numbers are no surprise at all, but still, it’s a record. On the plus side, viewing for the overall tournament was actually up a tad from last year. I’ll add those numbers to the post.
Last night the game was very boring. I’m surpised the numbers were still this high.
Blowouts suck. I can’t imagine any sports fans that watched the whole thing unless they were an active Michigan State fan(Sadists, but I’ve watched more depressing Bills games in their entirety) or a UNC fan.
Watching the 10 minutes of this game that I did made me miss last year’s awesome game even more. that game was pure excitement. Apparently we can get 2 great Super Bowls in a row but not 2 great Men’s Championship Games
Kind of surprised that the 18-34 male demo dropped so much (14%) for the entire tournament, while the 25-54 male demo hardly dropped at all (2%). Conventional wisdom has always been that basketball skews youngest among the major sports. Maybe that’s changing as the country gets older overall. Lord knows, I moved out of the basketball demo way too many years ago.