Preemptions for Madness and President Biden’s presser smother syndication

Review based on a national syndicated rating report for the week ending March 28, 2021.

Most of the top shows in syndication found the going rough in the session ending March 28 thanks to heavy preemptions for the annual NCAA Basketball March Madness and President Biden’s March 25^th press conference.

For example, Jeopardy (5.2 live plus same day national Nielsen rating, down 2% from the week before), which was hosted by Dr. Oz, declined for the third week in a row and marked the show’s worst household number since the session ending January 3, 2021.

 Sister show Wheel of Fortune (4.9, down 2%) also suffered, hitting its lowest rating since the week ending December 27, 2020.

On the other hand Family Feud (5.4, unchanged) led the game shows and all of syndication for the second week in a row and clocked back-to-back wins for the first time since the frame ending January 3, 2021.

Other strong access performers were Extra (0.7) and TMZ (0.8), which were the only magazines in the first five to hold all of their ground and avoid any declines week to week.

Live with Kelly and Ryan (1.8, steady) continued to dominate the talk show race, finishing first for the 24^th time in the last 29 weeks.

Dr. Phil (1.5, down 6%) was a competitive second despite being very heavily preempted by basketball and unable to air its primary run in any of the top five markets

Maury (1.0, unchanged) was a distant third, tying Wendy Williams (1.0, up 11%), followed by Ellen DeGeneres (0.9, down 10%), which equaled its all-time low.