CBS Wins Saturday with Final Four

NEW YORK: CBS took Saturday prime time according to overnight Nielsen numbers. The network’s coverage of the Final Four men’s college basketball tourney pulled in nearly 14 million viewers from 8 to 11 p.m. Fox had 5 million; ABC, 3.4 million, and NBC3.2 million.

For the 8 p.m. time slot, Fox competed with a repeat of “Cops,” which pulled in 4.5 million viewers.
ABC ran a movie, “Yours, Mine & Ours,” which drew 3.6 million.
NBC’s repeat finale of “ER” from 8 to 10 p.m. got 2.5 million viewers.
At 9 p.m., “America’s Most Wanted” on Fox drew 5.3 million people.
During the 10 p.m. hour, ABC’s repeat of a pilot for “Cupid,” pulled in nearly 4.6 million, as did NBC’s “Law & Order” repeat.

CBS’s college basketball coverage drove a win for the network on Saturday, March 28, with 10.5 million viewers from 8 to 9:30 p.m. The network posted a full 8-to-11 p.m. total of 8.6 million, versus 5.5 million for Fox; 4.75 million for ABC and 3.7 million for NBC.

Overnights, posted at TVBytheNumbers.com, comprise audience numbers submitted by affiliates, and are subject to change in the final analysis.

Online, CBSSports.com continued to rack up records for March Madness on Demand. Traffic for the first four rounds of coverage was up 7 percent in metered markets from last year, CBS said.
Through Sunday, March 29, the video player logged 6.92 million unique visitors compared to 4.43 million last year. More than 8 million hours of live content was streamed versus 4.7 million last year. -- Deborah D. McAdams