March Madness: TV ratings slightly up over last year despite Sunday's blowouts

The first three days of the NCAA Tournament attracted record ratings, only to see the momentum stifled due to Sunday’s games being blowouts. Overall, the tournament is averaging 9.07 million viewers on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV. That is a slight increase over the 9.05 million average at this point last year. Through Saturday, the tournament averaged 9.0 million, making it the most-watched through that stage. Sunday’s games averaged 8.91 million, an 8% decrease over last year. The average winning margin of the eight games was 18.9 points, including Duke’s 93-55 blowout of James Madison and Purdue’s 106-67 rout of James Madison, both on CBS.