By David Barron
In keeping with the continued fragmentation of television audiences, viewership for the NCAA Tournament championship game between Baylor and Gonzaga was down from the last title game two years ago, according to the Nielsen Co.
The game on CBS drew a 9.4 Nielsen rating with a 21 share and an average audience of 16.92 million viewers. Virginia-Texas Tech two years ago had an 11.6 rating and 19.63 million viewers.
It was the lowest-rated NCAA title game ever on broadcast television but the best-watched non-football telecast since the dreaded Game 7 of the 2019 World Series between the Astros and Nationals, which was seen by 23.2 million.
As an indicator of the degree to which network television viewership has lagged, the 20th-ranked show of last week had just over five million viewers. That would have been an unbelievably low number for top 20 positioning in the pre-streaming era.
As for the Baylor-Gonzaga game, Houston’s audience on KHOU (Channel 11) beat the national curve, with a 12.1 rating and 476,100 viewers. KHOU also benefited from two other University of Houston games, including the Cougars’ national semifinal against Baylor.
That game had a 9.4 rating in Houston, more than double the 4.4 national rating on CBS.
Here are the 20 most-viewed NCAA Tournament games in Houston.
4 DVRs and Beyond 