SUPER BOWL XXI : THE AFTERMATH : Super Bowl TV Audience Looks Huge, but Probably Not Record

Early indications are that the national rating for Sunday’s Super Bowl will be very high, but short of the record.

CBS announced Monday that the game drew an average overnight Nielsen rating of 47.8 and an average share of 68 in the nation’s 13 largest markets.

Last year, the overnight rating for the Super Bowl was 47.3 and the national rating was 48.3.

The national rating for this year’s game will not be available until today.

The record Super Bowl rating is 49.1, drawn by the 1982 game between the San Francisco 49ers and Cincinnati Bengals.

Sunday’s Super Bowl drew the highest rating, a 58.6, in Washington. The New York rating was 53.4, the Denver rating 55.7, with an impressive 84 share. The Los Angeles rating was 43.2., the lowest of the 13 major markets.

The 53.4 rating in New York is not as high as the 56.0 rating drawn by the seventh game of last year’s World Series between the New York Mets and Boston Red Sox.