NCAA Tournament is dominating the cable landscape

Turner Sports is really pleased with how the ratings from this year’s NCAA Tournament. Not only has the first week provided record overnights, but there has been increased viewership across the board for TBS, TNT and lo and behold, truTV.

Due to some very good games and upsets, the NCAA Tournament paced the three networks to the 21 most-watched sporting events on cable last week. In addition, TNT and TBS ranked 1-2 among all of the cable networks for the week of March 16-21. truTV finished 9th in the cable wars.

Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand listed the Top 10 most-watched sporting events on cable and all were NCAA Tournament games:

1. TBS: March 21 — Notre Dame-Butler, 3.907 million
2. TNT: March 22 — Maryland-West Virginia, 3.907 million
3. TNT: March 21 — Gonzaga-North Dakota, 3.555 million
4. truTV: March 22 — Wisconsin-Oregon, 3.502 million
5. TBS: March 21 — Oregon-Oklahoma, 3.266 million
6. TNT: March 19 — Harvard-UNC, 3.224 million
7. TNT: March 19 — Ohio St-VCU, 2.906 million
8. TBS: March 22 — Louisville-Northern Iowa, 2.889 million
9. TNT: March 22 — Oklahoma-Dayton, 2.805 million
10. TBS: March 20 — Coastal Carolina-Wisconsin, 2.677 million

And do you see number 4? Do you notice that truTV is in the middle of the TBS/TNT sandwich in the top ten? You know how we all joke that we can’t find truTV when it’s time for the NCAA Tournament? Well, apparently we found truTV enough for Wisconsin-Oregon to make that the most-watched program in truTV’s history! That’s right! This is confirmed by SBJ’s Austin Karp:

So Wisconsin-Oregon on Sunday night finished with 3.5 million viewers. Most-watched program ever on truTV.

— Austin Karp (@AustinKarp) March 24, 2015

So Turner can deem the first week of the 2015 NCAA Tournament a huge hit and with the Sweet 16 fast approaching, TBS is looking forward to the possibility of another Top Ten finish in the cable ratings.

If the NCAA Tournament does this well again for the Turner networks next year, in particular truTV, we may have to retire the jokes for good.

[Multichannel News/John Ourand]