• by Wayne Friedman , April 9, 2012

Social media-television activity in March highlights CBS' "NCAA Men's College Basketball Tournament" -- with individual episodes on NBC's "The Voice" and ABC Family's "Pretty Little Liars" also scoring high.

CBS was the top broadcast network for the month, with around 36% share of social media TV activity. NBC and Fox tied for around 18% share; ABC was at a 15 share, and CW was at 9%, per social media researcher Trendrr.TV. 

The networks that improved the most were CBS and NBC, with the biggest gains -- up 5 percentage points each from their February levels. Fox was down from a 20% share in February; ABC was 9 percentage points lower from its 24% share in February.

MTV was the top social TV network among cable channels -- a 10% share with truTV -- from its heavy coverage of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, in second at a 9% share. Two other Turner Broadcasting networks (also airing the NCAA games) also did well:TBS was at 8%, good for third place -- and TNT tied with Nickelodeon for fourth with a 7% share each.

CBS' NCAA's Final game between Kentucky and Kansas pulled in 700,000 social media interactions -- the most of any game in the tournament. The round of 64 game where Lehigh upset Duke was the second-biggest game at around 550,000.

The top two nonscripted shows: "The Battle Begins” episode of NBC's "The Voice" clocked 222,278 total activity on March 5. The season finale of ABC's "Pretty Little Liars" generated 841,661 total activity on March 19.

Looking at all social media/TV activity, there were over 150 million conversations and other social interactions through the first quarter of 2012. In March, there were over 580,000 social interactions per day on broadcast television, and an average of over 860,000 social interactions per day on cable television.

Social media company Trendrr says three quarters of all social TV engagement in March came from Twitter. After Twitter were Facebook with 15% share and GetGlue at 16%.