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Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Fri.-Sun., March 17-19) -- NCAA tourney starts bouncing higher (updated in bold face)

By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
First of all, ratings for Friday’s SMU and Baylor games on little truTV were not available for the D-FW viewing area. Nor for that matter were Sunday’s, in which Baylor advanced to the NCAA basketball tourney’s Sweet 16 by surviving USC -- and truTV.

In other words, the “Funny Because It’s tru” network just isn’t considered to be of enough consequence for local stations to keep tabs on its ratings. Sorry about that.

(CBS11 sports anchor Bill Jones did, however, post a chart on Twitter Monday afternoon with household ratings (we use total viewers) for the weekend tournament games. Sunday’s Baylor-USC game had a 2.0 rating (54,266 households in a D-FW market of 2.713 million) to rank seventh among the tournament match ups. Friday’s SMU-USC game had just a 1.2 rating (32,560 households) to finish 12th among the weekend games. The early-starting Baylor-New Mexico State game is not listed on Jones’ chart. D-FW’s top draw, Kansas vs. Michigan on CBS, drew 132,952 households. The top six most-watched games all were on CBS.)

The NCAA perked up on Saturday and Sunday, at least for the games shown by CBS. Sunday’s late afternoon/early evening Kansas-Michigan State matchup ranked highest with 174,506 total viewers and 73,763 in the advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-old demographic. That game and the preceding Kentucky-Wichita State face-off on CBS easily beat all competing programming in both ratings measurements.

In prime-time Sunday, the CBS prime-time lineup of 60 Minutes, NCIS: Los Angeles, Madam Secretary and Elementary outdrew all of its rivals in total viewers among the Big Four broadcast networks. But NBC’s trio of Little Big Shots, Chicago Justice and Shades of Blue ran the table with 18-to-49-year-olds.

Again coming up virtually empty was ABC’s second episode of the first-rate American Crime series. It ran a distant fourth from 9 to 10 p.m. in total viewers (29,084) and 18-to-49-year-olds (6,414).

On Saturday, the Wisconsin Badgers’ big afternoon upset win over No. 1 overall seed Villanova ranked as the entire day’s top TV attraction with 138,151 total viewers on CBS. Friday’s nighttime NCAA match ups on CBS didn’t fare nearly as well. ABC’s 8 to 10 p.m. presentation, Truth and Lies: The Family Manson, more than doubled the ratings for basketball with 130,880 total viewers and also won comfortably in the 18-to-49-year-old realm with 38,485 viewers.

On all three days, the CBS tournament games drew bigger crowds than those on TBS and TNT.

Here are Friday’s local news derby numbers.

TEGNA8 topped the 10 p.m. ratings in total viewers while NBC5 led with 25-to-54-year-olds (main advertiser target audience for news programming).

Fox4 swept the 6 a.m. competitions and won at both 5 and 6 p.m. among 25-to-54-year-olds. TEGNA8 drew the most total viewers at 5 and 6 p.m.

CBS11 had its 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts rubbed out by NCAA hoops coverage. And the station might as well not have bothered at 6 a.m., where its haul of 25-to-54-year-olds hit rock bottom and then some with -- 601. In comparison, frontrunner Fox4 had 39,087, trailed by NBC5 (28,864) and TEGNA8 (10,223).

Email comments or questions to: unclebarky@verizon.net