Initial Rounds of NCAA Basketball Tournaments Increase TV Viewership Shares Year-Over-Year
Welcome to our weekly snapshot of TV by the numbers, highlighting the most-watched shows and networks for March 18-24, with insights from Inscape, the currency-grade smart TV ACR data provider and data technology division of Vizio. Data is linear, live TV only and includes all episode types (new and reruns). Rankings are by percent share duration (i.e., time spent watching).
March Madness tipped off with a bang last week, with the first few rounds of the men's tournament scoring an 11.41% viewership share. That’s up from the 9.88% share captured by men’s games during the same time period in 2023. More eyes are on the women’s tournament this year as well (cough, cough, Caitlin Clark), with last week’s games snagging a 1.58% share, up from 0.79% in 2023.
Some more insights around the week’s top TV programming:
A few police procedurals rise up the ranking week-over-week: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit takes third place with a 0.94% share, up from No. 6 and 0.79% previously. NCIS moves up a notch to No. 8 (0.69% of minutes watched).
Fueled by reruns on ION and USA, plus new episodes on NBC, both Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D. make inroads, to No. 11 and No. 14, respectively. The last new episodes that aired from either show were in February, but the series often make appearances on the chart thanks to rerun marathons on cable networks.
The Price Is Right moves into tenth place (0.54%), up from No. 15 previously.
NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt was the sole week-over-week ranking newcomer, jumping up from No. 32 to No. 25 with 0.41% of minutes watched.