An estimated 99.9 million viewers (Persons 2+) have watched all-or-part of CBS Sports’ and Turner Sports’ coverage of the 2011 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship from the FIRST FOUR on Tuesday, March 15 through the Regional Finals on Sunday, March 27, according to a Nielsen cume study.
This year marked the first time that all of the games in the tournament were available nationally in their entirety on TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV.
The 99.9 million viewers represent an 11% increase over 89.6 million for CBS Sports’ coverage in 2010 and is higher than any of the all-or-part viewership that occurred in the past 10 years during the first two weeks of the NCAA Tournament on CBS.
The previous high in the past 10 years was in 2005 when 95.6 million viewers watched all-or-part of the coverage in which three of the four Regional Final games on Saturday and Sunday in the second week went to overtime.
The cume study is based on Total Viewers (Persons 2+) who have watched at least six minutes of the NCAA Tournament game coverage in the first two weeks of the event.
(source: CBS)
