NBC Rates Well With Super Bowl
Given a game that went down to the wire, NBC got a solid 44.5 national rating with a 67 share for Sunday’s Super Bowl.
The viewing audience was about 133.4 million, third-largest in U.S. television history. The largest was 138.4 million for the 1996 Super Bowl and 134.8 million for the 1994 Super Bowl. The 1993 Super Bowl also had a viewing audience of about 133.4 million.
The 44.5 rating, 13th-highest in Super Bowl history, is higher than the 43.3 rating for last year’s Super Bowl between Green Bay and New England but below the 46.1 for Dallas and Pittsburgh in 1996. All three of Dallas’ Super Bowl appearances this decade got ratings higher than 45.
The Los Angeles rating for Sunday’s game was a 43.6 with an impressive 71 share.
Of course, the game got the highest rating in the markets of the two teams. Denver did a 50.8 rating with an 85 share and Milwaukee had a 54.2 with an 82. San Diego, the host city, had a 53.1 with an 81.
Eight of the 10 most-watched TV programs in U.S history are Super Bowls, including the top six.
Each rating point represents 980,000 households. The share is the percentage tuned to a program among TVs in use at the time.
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