Super Bowl Gets Low Rating

The Super Bowl, which got a disappointing national rating of 40.3, did worse in Los Angeles, getting a record low 32.9.

The previous L.A. low was a 33.3 for the 1974 Super Bowl between Miami and Minnesota. The first Super Bowl in 1967, televised by NBC and CBS, was blacked out in Los Angeles.

As for Sunday’s national rating, the only Super Bowls since 1971 with a lower number were the 39.0 for the 1990 game in which San Francisco beat Denver, 55-10, and the 40.2 for the 1999 game in which Denver beat Atlanta, 34-19.

The New York rating for Sunday’s game was merely a 40.9. Tampa, Fla., the site of the game, got a 51.2, but Baltimore got a 49.1.

The national share for the Baltimore Ravens’ 34-7 victory over the New York Giants was a record low 60. The L.A. share was a 59.

The share represents a percentage of homes where television is being watched. A rating represents a percentage of all television households.

The lowest previous national share for any Super Bowl was a 61 in 1999, on Fox, and in 1992, the last time CBS televised the game.

The rating for Sunday’s game was down 7% from last year’s Super Bowl on ABC, in which St. Louis beat Tennessee, 23-16.

Still, CBS estimates 131.2 million people watched at least part of Sunday’s game, making it the fifth most-watched Super Bowl.

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Super Bowl TV Ratings

Super Bowl television ratings and shares, including network (NBC and CBS televised the first Super Bowl). The rating represents the percentage of televisions tuned in to a program. The share is the percentage of televisions on at the time that watched:

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Year, Network Rating Share 1967 CBS 22.6 43 1967 NBC 18.5 36 1968 CBS 36.8 68 1969 NBC 36.0 71 1970 CBS 39.4 69 1971 NBC 39.9 75 1972 CBS 44.2 74 1973 NBC 42.7 72 1974 CBS 41.6 73 1975 NBC 42.4 72 1976 CBS 42.3 78 1977 NBC 44.4 73 1978 CBS 47.2 67 1979 NBC 47.1 74 1980 CBS 46.3 67 1981 NBC 44.4 63 1982 CBS 49.1 73 1983 NBC 48.6 69 1984 CBS 46.4 71 1985 ABC 46.4 63 1986 NBC 48.3 70 1987 CBS 45.8 66 1988 ABC 41.9 62 1989 NBC 43.5 68 1990 CBS 39.0 63 1991 ABC 41.8 63 1992 CBS 40.3 61 1993 NBC 45.1 66 1994 NBC 45.4 66 1995 ABC 41.3 63 1996 NBC 46.1 72 1997 FOX 43.3 65 1998 NBC 44.5 67 1999 FOX 40.2 61 2000 ABC 43.2 62 2001 CBS 40.3 60

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