NCAA Games Fail to Score

CBS’ prime-time coverage of Thursday’s opening round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament found the network mired in fourth place, although its ratings were up 3.7% over last year.

The network’s assortment of eight games averaged an 8.4 rating, according to figures released Friday by the A.C. Nielsen Co. With each national rating point being equivalent to 931,000 households, that means about 7.8 million households were tuned in.

NBC won the night with a 14 rating and ABC was second at 12.8. Fox, which only has two hours of prime-time programming Thursdays, averaged an 11.3 from 8-10 p.m.

The games drew especially poor ratings in the Los Angeles area. The 3.6 prime-time rating was the second lowest among the 29 major markets where figures were available, topping only Miami’s 3.3. Among factors hurting the ratings here is that games beginning in prime time in the Eastern and Central time zones start at a time when many potential viewers were still at work or commuting home in Southern California.

The Nielsen ratings only cover viewing in homes and apartments. Businesses, restaurants, bars and college dormitories, venues where college basketball games are often viewed, are not included because of the difficulty in obtaining accurate figures.