NCAA title game started and ended too late for many viewers

Many basketball fans might have been sleeping by the time Louisville's win was complete.

April 09, 2013|Keith Groller

It was a great game.

But it's likely that many missed the finish.

That's because the NCAA men's basketball championship game between Louisville and Michigan didn't end until 11:45 Eastern time.

And, then after the game's conclusion, CBS had to get in several commercial breaks and another lengthy round table discussion featuring Greg Gumbel, Greg Anthony, Doug Gottlieb, Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley, all while the Louisville team was standing on the podium seemingly waiting for the postgame ceremony to begin.

That meant that the interview with Louisville player Kevin Ware, still the story of this year's tournament, didn't happen until after midnight and the poignant scene of Ware cutting down his piece of the net (the basket was lowered for him) didn't happen until 12:09 a.m. and the showing of "One Shining Moment," the annual video homage to March Madness, didn't begin until 12:14 a.m. with CBS signing off three minutes later.

Major League Baseball lost a generation or two of young fans by their insistence on starting playoff and World Series games too late for kids on a school night to watch the games all the way through.

By starting the national title game so late — 9:26 p.m. — the NCAA and CBS catered to the West Coast and forced many viewers in the East and Central time zones to make a decision about whether to endure a groggy Tuesday morning or miss the conclusion of the tournament.

If college basketball was played without media timeouts built in, you could probably get a game completed in about an hour and 45 minutes.

However, the additional timeouts and the excessive fouling by the team trailing at the end of games means a two-hour game, minimum, and Monday's title game went longer than that by about 19 minutes.

Preliminary ratings revealed on Tuesday showed that this year's title game had an average of 23.4 million viewers, up 12 percent over last year's final between Kentucky and Kansas.

Not sure why such a significant leap, but the later start certainly didn't boost those ratings.

My theory is that the Ware story along with having such a recognizable coaching personality in Rick Pitino from a Big East school in the title game boosted the numbers as well as the fact that a popular Big Ten school like Michigan was the opponent.

Last year, Kentucky seemed to be an overwhelming favorite from the start of the tournament. It was like it was the Wildcat Invitational all along and those one-and-doners wearing those blue uniforms turned as many people off as they brought them to their big screens.

Overall, CBS is saying this is the most-watched NCAA Tournament in 19 years.

There are reports that CBS will kick coverage of the Final Four and national title game to one of the Turner affiliates (TBS or TNT) next season.

Don't see that happening for a while because the numbers are solid and it gives CBS a perfect major sports lead-in to its coverage of The Masters, which is coming up this weekend. Notice, too, that CBS is already hyping the Tiger Woods angle, and probably on its knees begging for sports' most compelling figure to stay in contention deep into Sunday.


As someone who covered Charles Barkley during his 76ers career, I find myself having the same feelings about him now that I had during his playing career.

Barkley could be a media person's delight, especially because the 76ers weren't very good toward the latter part of his time in Philly and the team was basically dull and non-interesting; kind of like the 76ers are now.

So, back then, Barkley's insights were one of the few bright spots.

But at some point you realize that Charles said so much stuff that you had to sift through a lot of the material to separate the newsy nuggets from the nonsense.

And that's how it is with Barkley in his role as an analyst on both the NCAA Tournament and NBA coverage.

He says a lot of stuff, but again, you have to sort through it to come up with something meaningful. Generally speaking last, he also seems determined to go against the grain, even if what the others are saying make a lot of sense.

In Monday night's postgame analysis, Anthony pinpointed the turnaround to Michigan coach John Beilein keeping Trey Burke on the bench too long in the first half with two fouls. Anthony felt that was a key to Louisville cutting a 12-point deficit to one by halftime.

Gottlieb agreed, but Barkley wanted to go elsewhere for his analysis.

Also, thanks to the barrage of Capital One commercials, Barkley is in vast danger of over-exposure if he isn't already there.


After plenty of hype, "Philly Sports Talk" made its debut at 5 p.m. on Monday. With the exception of an interview with Flyers coach Peter Laviolette and a "Quick Six" segment featuring Ryan Howard — "Who would play Ryan Howard the Ryan Howard Story?" was the first of the six riveting questions — there was little difference from Daily News Live.

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