Solid early bounce for March Madness

Welcome back from spring break everybody! Thought I would start the action with a post from TV Newsday regarding the NCAA march madness and the improvement of ratings. I found it interesting that the ratings were up 9% from last year, and that is only in the opening round. My question is to whether this has driven up the price of advertising during the airing of the games. From the people I know, there are ALOT of people who watch these games, and since CBS is the only station that airs them, people don't change the channels as much either. I have noticed that Vitamin Water is a big advertiser this year as I see their logo everywhere both on the court and in commercials, but I wonder about everyone else and what the action is like in the sales aspects of this

Opening round of games is up 9 percent over last year

By Toni Fitzgerald
Mar 23, 2009

The first round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament may have been light on upsets, with virtually all the high seeds prevailing easily, but it was heavy on viewers.

Thursday’s opening-round coverage on CBS was up 9 percent compared to last year, according to Nielsen overnights, from an average 4.3 household rating and 10 share to a 4.7/10.

All but one of the day’s four windows of games saw improvement versus 2008, with the second afternoon telecast up 0.4, to a 3.7, the second-highest rating in the past four years, and the two primetime windows both up 0.5.

That wasn’t the only area where CBS saw year-to-year improvements. Its March Madness on Demand online platform recorded its best-ever opening-day traffic as well.

The site’s video player drew 2.7 million unique visitors, up 56 percent versus last year. Those visitors watched 2.8 million hours of live video and audio streaming, 65 percent better than last year.

The TV and online growth is being attributed to a number of factors. The down economy certainly means more people are looking for cheap entertainment, and the NCAA tourney is free both online and off.

Too, an unusually large number of big-name schools, with huge alumni fan bases, made the tournament this year, cutting down on the potential small-school Cinderellas, who received very few bids. That surely drew in viewers for squads like Michigan who hadn’t made NCAAs in a few years.

Also, the competition certainly isn’t what it used to be on Thursday night. Though NCAAs faced an original episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” on ABC, that show’s ratings have plummeted since last year.

Meanwhile, online, a growing number of people have learned about the free CBS games, and an increasing number of surfers have the broadband internet capabilities to watch those games.

Plus, CBS partnered with literally hundreds of web and mobile sites this year to promote the game, including Facebook, YouTube, ESPN.com and more.