TBS’s coverage of March Madness, the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament, helped the network defeat Fox News Channel in primetime last week, Nielsen reported.
TBS averaged 3.1 million viewers for the week of March 20-March 26, ending Fox News’s seven-week run as the most watched cable network in primetime. The cable news network finished second with 2 million viewers, followed by MSNBC and ESPN, which tied for fourth with 1.2 million viewers, reported Nielsen.
FS1, on the strength of the 5.2 million viewers that tuned into the USA-Japan World Baseball Classic tournament final, finished fifth with 1 million viewers, followed by HGTV (940,000 viewers), Hallmark Channel (733,000), Food Network (679,000), INSP (678,000) and Discovery Channel (636,000).
On the total-day front, Fox News extended its winning streak to 11 weeks, averaging 1.3 million viewers. TBS finished a distant second with 872,000 viewers, filled by MSNBC (769,000), ESPN (539,000) and HGTV (482,000), according to Nielsen. ■
