@SportsTVRatings higher than last year’s Final 4?
— Jason McIntyre (@jasonrmcintyre) March 29, 2015
On the heels of Turner touting the 9.0 overnight household rating for last night’s Notre Dame-Kentucky matchup, Jason McIntyre asked the question above. It seemed like a really good question since those Final Four games were also on TBS. In looking it up, it did indeed appear to be the case that not only was last night’s number higher, but considerably higher. So we tweeted out:
Last year’s final four overnights: Florida-UConn: 4.6; Kentucky-Wisconsin: 5.6. Last night, Notre Dame-Kentucky: 9.0 — Sports TV Ratings (@SportsTVRatings) March 29, 2015
Unfortunately, we forgot about the “teamcasts” and including them, they added up to a similar 9.0 overnight, which we noted quickly afterwards:
Overnight ratings for Kentucky-Wisc Final Four last year w/teamcasts: TBS: 5.6 TNT (Kentucky Teamcast) 2.6 truTV (Wisconsin Teamcast)0.8
— Sports TV Ratings (@SportsTVRatings) March 29, 2015
The first tweet paints a more interesting picture, so we’re not surprised it got more Twitter play than the second tweet, but we feel compelled to note it here again anyway.
Stewart Mandel noted he found something saying that the aggregate number for last year’s Kentucky-Wisconsin final four matchup was a 9.2 not a 9.0:
@SportsTVRatings I’m confused. Last year they put our a press release saying Kentucky-Wisconsin got a 9.2 overnight. http://t.co/BjJbfU9R5X
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) March 29, 2015
It is a bit confusing because there are overnight ratings which only include the top 56 markets as well as fast nationals and final nationals which take into account all 210 markets.
Because the number Turner released this morning was the overnight household rating (top 56 markets) we compared to the overnight numbers from last year. The link Stewart found has last year’s fast national number.