As reported by Toni Fitzgerald at Medialifemagazine.com
CBS and Turner Sports got exactly what they'd hoped for by covering every single game in the opening rounds of the NCAA tournament: A big ratings bump.
First-weekend coverage across four networks tied for the best start to the tournament in 20 years, and resulted in a 17 percent boost over last year's ratings on CBS, according to Nielsen overnight ratings.
The Thursday through Sunday games, as well as last week's First Four play-in games, averaged a 6.2 household rating, up from a 5.3 last year.
That tied with 1993 and 1991 as the best in two decades. And Sunday's coverage saw strong numbers once again.
Sunday was up 14 percent over last year's 6.4 to a 7.3 rating, tying with 1998 for the best first Sunday of the tourney in 17 years.
The reason for all the gains is of course that all the games are available on TV for the first time. Up until this year CBS had aired regionalized coverage, and the only way to watch out-of-market games was to log on to March Madness on Demand.
But this year, with the new pact between the NCAA, Turner and CBS, which added a cable partner for the first time, every game was available on either CBS, TNT, TBS or truTV, which drove viewership.
CBS's ratings were down from last year, not surprisingly, because it was competing with games on the other networks for basketball fans' attention.
Whether these ratings increases hold will depend on what viewers think about the teams that are left, and there are a few interesting storylines that will play out.
Eleventh-seeded Virginia Commonwealth University, from the same conference as surprise 2006 Final Four squad George Mason, made the first Sweet Sixteen in school history, becoming half of this year's feel-good Cinderella story.
The other half is a school located just a few miles away from VCU, the University of Richmond, which qualified for just the second Sweet Sixteen in school history as a 12 seed.
And top-seeded Pittsburgh got knocked off Saturday by last year's runner-up, Butler, which was seeded only eighth.
The next round of games begin Thursday.
