• by Wayne Friedman , April 5, 2011

Although CBS and Turner Sports claim the best overall ratings for the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament in years, the finals game -- preliminarily -- slipped some from the year before.

A close game between University of Connecticut and Butler, which turned into an easy win for UConn, gave CBS a Nielsen preliminary 6.7 rating/17 share adults 18-49 rating on Monday night, down about 6% from last season's Kentucky-Butler contest. But as is usual with sports TV numbers, this could climb when the final data is released.

CBS and Turner Sports -- which co-aired the entire 68 team tournament -- have called the event a major success, saying that overall, the March Madness bunch of games posted their best results in six years.

The finals game -- which ran in prime time from around 9:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. EST -- put a dent into ABC's lineup for the night. Its big "Dancing with the Stars" from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. dropped 10% to 4.6 rating/12 share among 18-49 viewers; Castle was down 12% to a 2.9/7.

CBS looks to win the night among the 18-49 crowd over ABC -- a 5.0/13 to a 4.0/10 for ABC. But so far, ABC wins in total viewers, at 18.2 million to CBS' 14.4 million.

Univision came in at third place for the night -- a 1.6/4 among 18-49 viewers.

Fox was in repeats at a 1.3/3, in fourth place. NBC had one-third of its prime-time line-up in reruns: "Chuck" with a 0.6/2. Two originals from new NBC programs this season seemed to be playing out their last episodes as a series -- "The Event" at 1.2/3 and "Harry's Law" season finale with 1.3/3.

CW, also in repeats with "90210" and "Gossip Girl," earned a 0.3/1 in 18-49 and a 0.4/1 in 18-34 viewers.