Masters Ratings: CBS Down A Bit, And Those Live From #'s...

SportsMediaWatch.com reports an 8.5 overnight rating for CBS's Sunday Masters 2016 coverage, down 12% from last year (9.6) and up 9% from 2014 (7.8).

While it's the fourth-lowest for final round coverage of the past two decades, there was no Tiger and as Matt Yoder suggests at Awful Announcing the decline isn't that significant.

A more eye-opening set of numbers involves Golf Channel's Live From coverage leading up to the CBS weekend telecast. As already noted, the weekday Live From coverage nearly doubled ESPN, and the weekend numbers were shockingly good.

Saturday's Golf Channel numbers went like this in terms of average number of viewers, starting with the 8-9 am ET Morning Drive (156k avg.), followed by the Live From 9-10 am ET window and ending with the 2-3 pm ET window looking like this: 334k, 616k, 768k, 947k, 1.091m, 1.118m.

Sunday's numbers were just as strong in average viewers, starting with Morning Drive at 8 am with a 151k average, followed by Live From at 9 am to 2 pm with hourly averages looking like this: 280k, 288k, 597k, 879k, 1.037m.

Sunday's Life From following the CBS telecast drew a 294,000 average audience, showing once again how much viewers value the lead-in coverage over recaps, even when the lead-in coverage is on a different network.

Numbers were not available for CBS Sports Network's Masters On The Range coverage.