‘89 Super Bowl Sets No Record in Ratings Race

It had a thrilling finish and record prices for commercials. But Super Bowl XXIII, while grabbing a major TV audience, didn’t win the Super Bowl ratings title, national audience estimates showed Tuesday.

Sunday’s joust on NBC, in which the San Francisco 49ers beat the Cincinnati Bengals 20-16 in the last 30 seconds, had a national rating of 43.5--just over 39.3 million homes. It attracted 68% of the audience watching TV at the time.

But the all-time football ratings champ, according to an A. C. Nielsen Co. spokeswoman, remains the 1982 Super Bowl between the same teams. San Francisco won that one, too, 26-20.

The 1982 game had a 49.1 rating--which means just over 40 million homes--and drew an estimated 73% of the national viewing audience, according to Nielsen figures.

This year’s game came in at No. 30 on Nielsen’s list of the top-rated TV programs of all time, right ahead of the Feb. 16, 1964, appearance of the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

The ratings were also 4% higher than for last year’s Super Bowl on ABC, a blowout in which the Washington Redskins easily beat the Denver Broncos, 42-10. That game registered a 41.9 rating and attracted 62% of the national audience.

Because nearly the last two hours of the Super Bowl was seen in prime time in most of the country, the ratings helped propel top-rated NBC to a huge victory in the weekly ratings race. For the week that ended Sunday, NBC averaged a 20 rating, compared to 12.1 for ABC and 12 for CBS. (The full list is on Page 11.)

As one might expect, the best local ratings for Sunday’s Super Bowl were in San Francisco, where the game yielded a 53.4 rating, 82% of the local audience and bedlam along the boulevards after the 49ers won.

The reception was somewhat milder in Los Angeles, where the game garnered a local rating of 42.4 and 72% of the audience. (Ratings in Cincinnati were not available.)

Sunday’s game on NBC cost sponsors a record $675,000 for a 30-second commercial. It had a first for both the Super Bowl and network television--a 3-D commercial for Diet Coke that aired during halftime.

The game’s ratings were highest during its dramatic finale, rising to 46.9 in the last half hour of NBC’s telecast. Save for a slight and predictable halftime dip, the ratings steadily rose from a starting point of 38.6.