Google Sees Massive Spike In Searches For 'TruTV' As Basketball Fans Try To Watch March Madness
March Madness got underway on Tuesday night as Southeast Missouri State played Texas A&M Corpus-Christi in the NCAA First Four. The two No. 16 seeds battled it out for the honor of playing No. 1 overall seed Alabama in the First Round.
Not long after the Redhawks and the Islanders duked it out, Pittsburgh and Mississippi State were set to play in the First Four of the Midwest Region. Fairleigh Dickinson and Texas Southern, and Nevada and Arizona State were the other four teams selected to play in the First Four.
All four First Four games air on TruTV.
TruTV, a network owned by Warner Brothers, is part of the larger package of channels that air the NCAA Tournament, along with TBS, TNT and CBS. It is the least known of the four networks.
When TruTV isn't airing college basketball, its programming schedule includes: Impractical Jokers, Mythbusters, Hack My Life, and the occasional feature film, among others. But it is mostly Impractical Jokers. Impractical Jokers runs TruTV.
Those who don't watch Impractical Jokers may not know the network at all. Those who do watch Impractical Jokers likely have no idea what channel it is on.
Thus, as the First Four tipped off on Tuesday night, Google saw a massive spike in searches. It happens every year, and this year is no different.
March Madness and TruTV go hand-in-hand!
Here is a look at the Google search trend over the last five years. The blue line indicates searches for 'TruTV,' while the red line indicates searches for 'TrueTV channel.'
Can you tell when March Madness starts? 2020, of course, was the year that the NCAA Tournament was cancelled due to COVID-19.
Here is a look at the search trend over the last seven days leading up to tipoff:
Here is a look at the spike in real-time from Monday night into the first game on Tuesday:
Notice how the chart saw a decent dip after tipoff. It will jump back up again on Wednesday and Thursday as the games continue.
Happy TruTV Awareness Month!