CBS Scores Big With College Basketball Ratings

North Carolina’s 77-71 victory over Michigan was the second most-watched basketball game in U.S. television history, with 55 million people seeing all or part of Monday night’s NCAA men’s basketball championship.

The CBS telecast drew a 22.2 rating and 34% of the available audience, according to figures released Tuesday by the A.C. Nielsen Co. The rating was the second-highest since 1985, topped only by last year’s 22.7 for Duke’s 71-51 victory over Michigan, which was also the most-watched basketball game in U.S. history, with 58 million viewers.

The rating measures how many homes watched the game--in this case, more than 20.6 million. The total viewership includes those who watched in bars, hotel rooms, restaurants and college dormitories, venues not surveyed by Nielsen but included by CBS.

Ratings in the Los Angeles-Orange County area lagged far behind the rest of the nation. The 13.2 rating (representing about 655,000 homes) was the second-lowest among the 29 major markets for which figures were available.

Ratings for the three-week tournament were consistently lower here than the rest of the nation, caused in part because the live telecasts began at a time when many potential viewers were still at work or commuting home. The lack of a local team after the second round also hurt the ratings.

CBS averaged a 9.4 rating for its tournament telecasts, a 4% increase over last year and a 13% increase since 1991, the first year it held exclusive rights to the entire tournament.