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[QUOTE="Cusefan95, post: 5047080, member: 173"]
The switch to TBS was probably initially driven by, and is now accelerating, lower ratings.

A huge number of my friends who are casual fans took vacation days to hit sports bars the first two days of the tournament, started dropping out as their brackets fell apart, and NONE watched the Final Four since they were all eliminated from pools they were in.  The NCAA tournament is a weird gambling event where people essential gamble on the event overall - which means early ratings will stay strong but the Final Four will not.  Casuals who have no rooting interest or knowledge of the teams in the Final Four are less likely to bet on - and therefore watch - those games specifically.

If the NCAA ever does anything which makes bracket betting more difficult, I’d expect ratings would crater out and it wouldn’t be viable as a major network event anymore.  It’d be hard to overestimate how important that is to the ratings now.

Some what related - I remember my parents letting me take a nap when I got home from school the night of the championship game when I was as young as seven, then staying up to watch with my dad.  I remember all the championship games from the 80s, to the point I can still recite significant calls from those games from memory - “Wittenberg, oh it’s a long ways….THEY WON IT!!!!  On the dunk…”.  I have an eight year old son, with the 9:20 start I can’t justify doing that with him.  I’m sure the diehard interest I had as a young adult in college basketball was partly driven by getting to watch championship games with my dad - that not being something my son experiences is likely to push him into the casual category of fan as an adult.
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