Weekly numbers, March 23-29: Hoop dreams

The NCAA men’s tournament is all over the top of the ratings for March 23-29, reflective of an up year for the tournament as a whole. Through the Elite Eight, games on CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV are averaging 10.3 million viewers, up 9 percent from last year’s tournament and the most at this point in March Madness since 1993.

There are some caveats: Nielsen’s new way of collecting ratings data, put in place this season, has tended to favor live sports, and up until a few years ago the company didn’t consistently measure viewing outside people’s homes. Still: That’s a good number, and as you’ll see in the tables below, the biggest games were outside of primetime on the weekend.

The women’s tournament on ESPN is also holding up pretty well: The Sweet 16 (1.6 million viewers) and Elite Eight (2.7 million) rounds were the third most-watched ever, behind only 2025 and 2024. Considering that some the biggest stars from those years are either now in the WNBA (Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Kamilla Cardoso) or had to sit out this season with an injury (JuJu Watkins), that’s pretty damn good.

Of the non-sports entries in the top spots, it’s mostly shows that have held down those spots for much of the season.

Below are the weekly totals for March 23-29 for linear networks and March 2-8 for streaming.

*60 Minutes got a bump from the incredible finish to the UConn-Duke Elite Eight matchup, which you’ll see at No. 1 in the full-day chart below.

**This was the 500th episode of NCIS, which premiered in 2003, and also featured the death of a long-time character.

(Note: Viewers for nightly newscasts are averages of their weeknight broadcasts. Weekend ones are noted by day.)

*The game peaked with 18.9 million viewers for the final stretch, capped by the buzzer-beater from UConn’s Braylon Mullins that immediately entered tournament lore. If you’re a Duke fan and not a masochist, I wouldn’t click the link.

**This is Survivor’s 50th season, and the all-star contestants and hype around the milestone have paid off so far. This season is up 18 percent in viewers from season 49 in the fall and by almost 50 percent among adults aged 18-49, the demographic advertisers (still) pay a premium to reach.

***It’s been a big year for competition shows that have been around forever. Like Survivor, Idol has also grown over last season, and in the fall, Dancing With the Stars had its biggest ratings in several years.

*A movie starring Alan Ritchson of Reacher fame. With a run time of 106 minutes, War Machine’s 1.1 billion minutes of viewing time equates to about 10.38 million complete showings of the film.

**All four Jurassic World movies were in the top 10 streaming movies for this week, but last year’s Rebirth had almost as much watch time as the other three combined (853 million minutes).

*Between Young Sherlock and Bridgerton, it was a big week for shows set in 19th century England. (I made this joke in my Hollywood Reporter story about the streaming ratings too, but I like it, so I’m repeating it here.)

**First time on the charts for Monarch, is a TV spinoff/continuation of the Godzilla/Kong movies whose second season premiered in late February. That’s a pretty good number for an Apple show.

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