Kentucky's victory against Utah on Monday night got a 17.8 rating/28 share, the lowest for the NCAA championship game since the 1972 UCLA-Florida State final, played in the afternoon, got a 16.0/35.
The rating is 6 percent below the 18.9 for Arizona's 1997 overtime win against Kentucky and 22 percent below the 22.7 from the Michigan-Duke final in 1992. Since that game, the rating has slipped every year except 1997.
Since 1992, the ratings for the NBA Finals have jumped 18 percent, the Super Bowl is up 10 percent since and the World Series has slipped 17 percent.
The championship game did have a higher rating than last year's NBA Finals, which averaged a 16.8/20 for six games. The highest-rated game from the Bulls-Jazz series, the fifth game, got a 20.1/35.
The NCAA Tournament as a whole, with 18 games decided by fewer than three points or in overtime, ended at 7.3/17, 2 percent higher than the 7.2/17 last year. That rating is tied with 1995 for the second lowest since CBS began broadcasting the entire tournament in 1991. Last year's tournament averaged a 7.2/17.
Each ratings point represents 980,000 homes. The share is the percentage of televisions in actual use at the time.
04-02-98
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