While television ratings for the Division I Men’s Basketball Championship dropped 8 percent from 2007, at least one CBS executive believe the scintillating overtime finish between Kansas and Memphis in the final will pay off down the road.

CBS Senior Vice President of Programming Mike Aresco believes images from the April 7 championship game – particularly of Mario Chalmers sending the game into overtime on a late three-pointer – are the kind that will resonate with viewers for next year’s tournament.

“People may think there may not have been very many good games the last few years, but when you get a final like this, they really feel bad if they miss it,” Aresco said.

The 2008 championship game drew a rating of 12.1 nationally, virtually identical to the 12.2 for the Florida-Ohio State matchup in 2007 featuring the defending national champions against the Greg Oden-led Buckeyes.

It was quite a ratings rebound, considering neither national semifinal produced a fantastic finish. With all four No. 1 seeds advancing to the Final Four for the first time since seeding began in 1979, the double-digit victories by Memphis and Kansas weren’t a ratings bonanza.

The Memphis-UCLA game was down 14 percent compared to the Ohio State-Georgetown contest in 2007. The second part of the doubleheader between Kansas and North Carolina was virtually even with last year’s Florida-UCLA contest.

Aresco said the margin of victories played a role of the rest of this year’s tournament.

“All tournaments have their great moments,” he said. “This one probably had fewer of them than the last few years, but that is a cyclical thing. Next year, you could end up with six or seven overtime games. You just never know.”

Other factors for the drop in ratings may have been the lack of Midwest teams such as Illinois or Ohio State, who have huge fan bases that lead to bigger ratings, and not having teams located near New York City and Boston make the tourney field.

“That takes out two big population chunks of the country,” Aresco said.

Ratings rise with close games and Cinderella stories. This year’s main Cinderella was Davidson. The Wildcats and sophomore guard Stephen Curry advanced to the regional finals, where they lost a two-point game to eventual national champion Kansas.

Besides Xavier’s 79-75 overtime win over West Virginia in the West regional semifinals on March 27, there were no close finishes over the entire regional weekend.

Having the tournament tip off with a bang helps, too, but the only exciting finish on this year’s opening day came when Duke edged Belmont, 71-70, in a Thursday-night window.

“When you don’t get off to a great start – the first day wasn’t as exciting as it normally is – it influences momentum, and we had blowouts,” Aresco said.

The days of ratings in the mid-teens may be gone with the proliferation of cable and satellite television in the market. Viewers have so many more options than in the past. So the bottom line in the ratings game is exciting finishes that keep people from pushing the buttons on their remote control.

“But having a championship game as good as this one will have some impact down the road,” Aresco said. “It creates great momentum for the tournament going forward. People were talking about it all week. It was a fun game to watch.”

Women’s ratings rise

Television ratings for the women’s championship game and the entire tournament were up from last year.

Tennessee’s 64-48 victory over Stanford on ESPN April 8 earned a 3.0 rating, up 30 percent from the 2.3 for last season’s Tennessee-Rutgers game.

For the entire tournament, games on ESPN averaged a 1.4 rating, compared with 1.0 in 2007. The average rating for games on ESPN2 increased from 0.5 to 0.6.