The March Madness men's and women's college basketball tournaments were a primetime ratings goldmine for ESPN, TNT and TBS, leading all three to finish among the most-watched networks on cable last week.
ESPN averaged 3.7 million viewers for the week of April 1 to April 7 to beat out second-place Fox News Channel, which averaged 1.9 million viewers, according to Nielsen numbers supplied by Fox News.
ESPN was bolstered by its primetime coverage of of the women’s tournament, including the April 1 Iowa-LSU regional final, which garnered 12.3 million viewers, and the April 5 Iowa-UConn national semifinal, which drew 14.2 million viewers.
ESPN and ABC’s simulcast of the April 7 Iowa-South Carolina Sunday afternoon tournament finals set the all-time audience record for a women’s college basketball game with 18.9 million viewers.
On the men’s side, TNT and TBS’s semifinal round coverage helped the networks average 1.4 million and 1.3 million viewers, respectively. Finishing fifth for the week was MSNBC, which averaged 1 million viewers.
HGTV pulled into sixth place with 753,000 viewers, followed by Hallmark Channel (685,000 viewers), History (649,000), USA Network (584,000) and INSP (565,000).
Fox News led all cable networks in total day for the 13th straight week, averaging 1.2 million viewers. ESPN placed second with 1 million viewers, followed by MSNBC (777,000), TBS (521,000) and TNT (446,000), according to Nielsen.
