NCAA Good For CBS: ABC Continues Sunday Roll

The NCAA basketball tournament continued its winning ways on CBS, thanks to close finishes for a number of games--as top-seeded teams such as Duke and University of Connecticut took unexpected tumbles.

Through the first week of action CBS's preliminary average ratings are a 5.9, which is down 3 percent from a year ago. Still, these are the second best numbers since 1999.

On Thursday, LSU took out Duke, and hit a big 7.6 household rating/13 share. That was up from 10 percent for a comparable Thursday night game last year, which posted a 6.9/12.

Another big game involved one of the biggest branded names in basketball--UCLA. The school returned to glory with victory over top-rated Gonzaga, as the game grabbed a Nielsen household 7.1/13--up 3 percent from last year's 6.9/12.

For regularly scheduled network programming, Sunday night continued to go ABC's way. "Desperate Housewives," with a new episode, averaged an 8.8 rating/19 share in adults 18-49, and grabbed 21.3 million viewers. Its partner in crime, "Grey's Anatomy," ran a repeat and thus backed off its big numbers of recent weeks, but still pulled in with a strong 6.7/17 in adults 18-49 and 15 million viewers.

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The win came against a hodgepodge of other network stuff, both new and old. There were repeats of some strong CBS shows--"CSI" and "Without a Trace," for example. NBC, however, had a new episode for "Crossing Jordan," which pulled down a 3.0/7 and 10.5 million overall viewers.

CBS' NCAA coverage had a belated start on Sunday because of the "60 Minutes" big-time interview with Tiger Woods. "60 Minutes" pulled in a nice 4.9/12 in adults 18-49, grabbing 19.3 million viewers. This ran against a special Fox episode of "The Simpsons," which showed off a live-action opening using the real actors who do the voices of the Simpsons' characters. That averaged a 5.1/13 in adults 18-49 and 10.1 million viewers.

Preliminarily, ABC won prime time with a 5.8/14 and 14.7 million viewers. CBS was next, with a 3.8/10 in adult 18-49 viewers and 13.5 million overall viewers.

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