Ratings: ‘American Idol’ falls more; ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ steady; NCAA Tournament weak

For all of the talk about brackets and everything else with the NCAA Tournament, we really have to say that the amount of people who actually sit down and watch the games themselves are a little bit lower than expected. We’ll get to that a little bit later in this ratings article.

The good news – First, let’s pour a tiny amount of praise on some of the shows that at least have something to celebrate now. “Grey’s Anatomy” held firm Thursday with a 2.1 rating in the 18-49 demographic, which we think really does not get enough praise. The show is down less than 4% year-to-year, so for people who thought that Derek’s death was going to kill the show, you really could not be more wrong. This is in contrast to another show on ABC in “How to Get Away with Murder”; while it stayed steady with a 1.4 for its season 2 finale, the show is down well over 30% from its season 1 average.

The bad news – There really wasn’t that much on of note Thursday, but “American Idol” (1.7) continues to fall and it shows us more as to why the show is ending this season. At least it is doing so with its ratings not being a complete disaster, which they could have been had Fox opted for another year or two.

Also, the NCAA Tournament (or at least the part of it that was in primetime) posted a 1.3. Granted, this is the part of the competition where you really only watch if you are a fan of a specific team; the ratings will improve as time goes on, and we certainly do not doubt if CBS is truly satisfied with getting this coverage.

We’ll have more ratings news in due time over at the link here. Stay tuned! Also, you can sign up right now over here to get some more TV news on everything we cover, sent right over to you via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: Fox.)