Sunday’s Super Bowl kept the officials scrambling to review hard-to-call plays on the field, so maybe it’s no surprise that the TV ratings needed a thorough look too.
After examining the numbers more closely, Nielsen Media Research said Tuesday that NBC’s game actually delivered an average of 98.7 million total viewers, making it the most-watched Super Bowl ever and the No. 2 telecast of all time, behind only the 1983 series finale of “MASH” with 106 million.
98.7 million total viewers, while an impressive number, is less than a third of the U.S. population. Meaning, a significant majority of Americans did not view the game. The MASH finale, by comparison, was viewed by just under half the 1983 US population of 233,000.
That’s because dem Stillers were playin’ anat!
Just an edit note. Three more zeros need to be added to the 1983 US population. The correct number is (rounded off) 233,000,000.