Miami of Ohio showed it can move the needle in its lone win of the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s Miami (Ohio)-SMU NCAA men\u2019s basketball tournament \u201cFirst Four\u201d game averaged 2.8 million viewers on truTV, trailing only UCLA-Michigan State in 2021 (3.15M) \u2014 which aired on TBS as part of a COVID-altered schedule \u2014 as the most-watched game in the round (dates back to 2011).<\/p>\n
The Redhawks\u2019 win increased 17% from Xavier-Texas last year, which held the previous high with 2.4 million (not counting 2021).<\/p>\n
Miami, which was eliminated from the NCAA Tournament on Friday, was one of the stories of the college basketball season \u2014 compiling an undefeated regular season record before a loss in the first round of the MAC Tournament.<\/p>\n
None of the other \u201cFirst Four\u201d games reached the two million mark. Earlier Wednesday, Prairie View A&M-Lehigh averaged 1.5 million (+6%).<\/p>\n
Facing a record-setting World Baseball Classic final \u2014 which with over ten million viewers performed more like a World Series game \u2014 Tuesday\u2019s Texas-NC State game averaged 1.8 million, down 20% from North Carolina-San Diego State last year (2.2M). Howard-UMBC led in with 1.4 million, on par with a year ago.<\/p>\n
Despite the Tuesday declines, the \u201cFirst Four\u201d grossed 7.5 million viewers \u2014 edging past last year (7.4M) to rank as the highest for the event in its traditional two-day format. (The games grossed 7.8 million in the COVID-altered year of 2021, when they all took place on the same day and two aired on TBS.)<\/p>\n
Though all four games air in distinct timeslots, the \u201cFirst Four\u201d counts as a single telecast window in the CBS\/TNT Sports NCAA Tournament viewership average, a relic from the days when there was a single play-in game.<\/p>\n
Though officially a record, the increase is well within the range that can be explained by Nielsen\u2019s methodological changes of the past year, specifically the expansion of its out-of-home viewing sample and shift to a new currency that combines \u201cBig Data\u201d from smart TVs and set-top boxes with its traditional panel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Miami of Ohio showed it can move the needle in its lone win of the NCAA Tournament. Wednesday\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[92647,123,125,124,92648],"class_list":["post-200414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-march-madness-ratings","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-ncaa-tournament-on-cbs-turner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}