http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07074/769713-194.stm
On the air: TV numbers on the decline
Thursday, March 15, 2007
By Bob Smizik:, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
CBS rolls out its 26th consecutive year of NCAA basketball tournament coverage shortly after noon today, and the sporting public is waiting in eager anticipation. It seems every year the interest in the 63-game tournament grows larger and larger.
Except it doesn't.
There might be no greater barometer of societal habits than television ratings, and those numbers concerning the tournament show a steep and almost continual decline. Much of that has to do with the expanding television universe. The glory days for the major networks were when they were just about the only choices viewers had. Now with hundreds of options, viewers are going in many other directions.
Still, the numbers can be alarming.
Ratings for CBS's coverage of the entire tournament peaked in 1983 with a 10.3 share. Total audience, which was not calculated until 1994, peaked in '98 at 153.7 million. Last year, ratings were a 6.3 and the total audience was 128.5 million. Ratings have not been above 6.8 since 1998.
The highest-rated championship game was in 1985, the historic Villanova-Georgetown classic, which had a 23.3 share. The first 13 years of CBS coverage, title game ratings were above 20 nine times. Last year's game, Florida and UCLA, had an 11.2 rating. Three of the past four title games have had ratings below 12.6.
Of the 10 highest-rated basketball games, nine are NCAA title games. The most recent was Arkansas-Duke in 1994.
CBS does not let those numbers dim its enthusiasm for this massive project. The network offers first-rate coverage with teams of quality announcers covering all eight first- and second-round sites along with expert production crews.
The crew of Kevin Harlan and Bob Wenzel will work the Buffalo region, where Pitt plays Wright State tonight. Other crews (play-by-play/analyst) are Jim Nantz/Billy Packer, Dick Enberg/Jay Bilas, Verne Lundquist/Bill Raftery, James Brown/Len Elmore, Gus Johnson/Dan Bonner, Ian Eagle/Jim Spanarkel and Tim Brando/Mike Gminski.
Four of those crews -- Nantz, Enberg, Lundquist and Brown -- move on to the regional sites next weekend. Nantz and Packer will do the Final Four.
The high-profile Brown, who was lured away from Fox to be the host of "The NFL Today," replaces Johnson as one of the four regional announcers. That's too bad because Johnson is excellent. But CBS isn't paying Brown a bundle of money to have him sit out such an important event.
Wenzel will be calling his sixth Pitt game of the year and likes the Panthers a lot. He was refreshingly candid in discussing Pitt's first-round opponent.
"Wright State is going to have a hard time. In all honesty, they don't have the size to deal with Aaron Gray. They have a very good guard in DeShaun Wood. The fans will like him. He's a little guy who scores all over the place. But Pittsburgh is famous for taking out the best player on the other team."
Should Pitt meet Duke, which opens with Virginia Commonwealth, in its second game, Wenzel sees a much closer contest. He said Duke does not have what has caused Pitt problems this season -- exceptionally quick guards and a dominating big man.
"Their guard are not overly quick. Josh McRoberts [at 6-10 Dukes' tallest starter] prefers to play outside. He's more mobile than Gray. It will be tough for Aaron to guard him away from the basket and it will be tough for him to guard Aaron around the basket."
Duke? No problem
The case could be convincingly made that Dick Groat is the greatest athlete in Duke history, but he will have no mixed emotions should Pitt meet his alma mater.
Groat, a Swissvale native, has been Pitt's color analyst, working alongside Bill Hillgrove, since 1979 and his loyalties rest clearly with his hometown team.
If the game comes off, this will be the second Pitt-Duke game Groat has worked as a broadcaster. The first was in his first season and that was a different story.
"Back then I knew more people [at Duke]," Groat said. "My son-in-law [Lou Goetz] was an assistant coach. I knew the whole coaching staff. I knew the players.
"Right now I know Coach K [Mike Krzyzewski] and his staff but I don't know a single player. I live and die with these Pitt kids. They keep me young."
Groat, the National League MVP and batting champion with the 1960 Pirates, also played in the NBA before committing fully to baseball. He held Duke's single-season scoring record for 50 years before it was broken in 2001 by Jason Williams.
/
On the air: TV numbers on the decline (NCAA MBB Tourney)
