TV Ratings : One-Sided Super Bowl Still Scores With Viewers

Despite all the predictions that Super Bowl XXIX would be one-sided, Americans turned to their television sets in droves Sunday to watch the NFL championship. ABC estimated Tuesday that 120 million people saw at least part of the San Francisco 49ers’ juggernaut, led by Steve Young and Jerry Rice, that made good on the forecasts, throttling the San Diego Chargers, 49-26.

The game ranked as the most-watched program of the week and also of the 1994-95 TV season, attracting 62% of the available audience. With an average audience of 83,420,000, it was the seventh-most-watched Super Bowl, ABC said.

Once the game was over, though, sets were clicked off quickly. ABC’s postgame telecast barely attracted half the viewers who’d watched the game, and the audience shrunk by half again for the premiere of “Extreme” that followed. Still, given that the starting point was so large, the adventure series wound up at No. 15 among the week’s 92 prime-time network programs.

CBS’ “Chicago Hope,” crushed at the beginning of the season opposite NBC’s “ER,” seems to have revived handsomely in its new position Monday night, ranking No. 11 last week. “ER” was No. 5.

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Southland Ratings

Here are A. C. Nielsen’s Top 10 prime-time programs in the Los Angeles area during the same week. Each rating point equals 50,064 households.

Program Network Rating 1. Super Bowl Postgame KABC 23.1 2. Home Improvement KABC 22.7 3. Seinfeld KNBC 22.2 4. “30 Years/National Geographic” KNBC 20.2 5. 20/20 KABC 17.9 6. ER KNBC 17.8 7. Friends KNBC 17.0 8. Mad About You KNBC 16.4 9. Grace Under Fire KABC 16.2 10. “World/Figure Skating” (Sat.) KNBC 16.0

Weekly Averages ABC: 15.7 NBC: 11.3 CBS: 9.9 FOX: 7.4 UPN: 5.4 WB: 2.3

Season to Date ABC: 12.2 CBS: 11.5 NBC: 11.4 FOX: 7.7 UPN: 6.9 WB: 2.1 Source: A. C. Nielsen