Spotted Ratings, Sunday 3/31/13

WHAT MATTERS:

• CBS easily won the broadcast evening, riding another NCAA basketball overrun (which had a 4.9 overall but a 5.6 in the 7:00 half-hour). There were lots of repeats and ugly-rated originals elsewhere on broadcast. Revenge neared its event season low given nearly the worst situation imaginable; it led out of a Once Upon a Time repeat and faced a huge gauntlet of cable offerings. NBC hit a low with a one-hour Celebrity Apprentice, which led out of three hours of The Voice encores. Presumably there was not enough time to expand the whole season to two hours after NBC made its Ready for Love move, so we get a couple one-hour weeks from Celebrity Apprentice.

• Virtually all the ratings excitement on this evening will come from one of the juiciest nights in cable TV history, with The Walking Dead's finale dealing with the final minutes of The Bible and the Game of Thrones premiere. So expect more updates to this post over the next couple days. 
• UPDATE, 3/31/13 1:43 PM ET: The first cable numbers released were for HBO's Game of Thrones, which hit a new series high 4.4 million viewers. That's a couple hundred thousand ahead of the previous high for last season's finale. If that audience has a similar makeup to last year's, that would suggest about a 2.3 demo, but it may well skew younger than that. Another 2.3 million viewers watched the two replays.
• UPDATE, 3/31/13 2:44 PM ET: Yet another series high is in, and this time it's The Walking Dead, which pulled in 12.4 million viewers (barely edging the 12.3 million for the spring premiere) and 8.1 million 18-49 viewers (a 6.4 rating, ahead of the spring premiere's 6.1). Aftershow Talking Dead also hit a series high (5.2 million viewers, 2.6 demo rating).
• The AMC release also included the 18-49 numbers for Game of Thrones (2.4), so thanks AMC!
• UPDATE, 3/31/13 2:48 PM ET: And History says The Bible concluded with 11.7 million total viewers, above the last three weeks but behind the premiere's 13.1 million. The finale's 3.0 demo rating was also behind the premiere number's 3.3 but ahead of the recent upper-2's level.

Spotted Ratings, Sunday 3/17/13

WHAT MATTERS:

•  It was another dull broadcast Sunday with most programs even to slightly down. There were a slew of upward finals adjustments, but Fox's Family Guy remained the biggest week-to-week dropper.

• The Walking Dead (5.5) won the week once again, topping The Big Bang Theory by an even wider margin this time. History got a nice week three bounce-back from The Bible (2.8) and Vikings (1.5).