NCAA championship: Blowout leads to decrease in NCAA final TV ratings
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Television ratings are down for an NCAA men's basketball championship game that wasn't competitive for most of the night.
North Carolina's 89-72 win over Michigan State on CBS on Monday drew an 11.9 overnight rating and 19 share. That's down 7 percent from last year's 12.8/20 for a much more closely contested game, when Kansas beat Memphis in overtime.
CBS said Tuesday that the tournament averaged a 6.3 overnight rating and 13 share. That's up 5 percent from 2008.
Overnight ratings measure the country's largest markets. The rating is the percentage of all homes with TVs, whether or not they are in use. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.