Giants Super Bowl victory most watched
February 5, 2008 by James Edwards
Filed under Sports
NFL Football at its best. NFL Football at its craziest.
Alan Alda, Mike Farrell, and Harry Morgan – How do you like the uniforms?
Quick quiz: If the Giants Super Bowl victory was the most watched Super Bowl ever and it was only the second most watched show ever, then what was the most watched show?
Are you trying to figure it out?
Well, even if you knew the answer, you might be trying to figure it out.
Here is a hint.
It involves Alan Alda (West Wing, Same Time Next Year).
You younger ones are probably saying Alan who?
And yet, Alan Alda played the part of quarterback George Plimpton in the movie Paper Lion about the Detroit Lions. This is a true story.
George was not really the quarterback. The Detroit Lions agreed to let 36 year old George Plimpton come into training camp as the 3rd string quarterback. They told no one he was actually a writer. Once he struggled to take a hike the secret was out.
The most watched show
It had a cast of characters named Hawkeye, Radar, BJ, and Hot Lips.
It had to do with a war in Korea. Did you know we fought a war in Korea?
It followed a famous movie with an incredible cast featuring Donald Sutherland (Klute, his son does 24), Elliott Gould (Oceans 12, 13), Tom Skerritt (Top Gun), Sally Kellerman (That’s Life), Robert Duvall (Second Hand Lions), and Rene Auberjonois (Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Boston Legal).
Give up?
The 97.5 million viewers who saw the New York Giants’ last-minute win over the New England Patriots made it the most-watched Super Bowl ever and second biggest event in American television history.
Only the “MASH” series finale in 1983, with 106 million viewers, was seen by more people, Nielsen Media Research said Monday. Sunday’s game eclipsed the previous Super Bowl record of 94.08 million, set when Dallas defeated Pittsburgh in 1996. source
Back to football
It was enough that you had Tom Brady, Randy Moss and the New England Patriots, but you also had Eli Manning with Peyton Manning in the stands and the New York Giants.
You had the possibility of an undefeated champion vs. a team that had showed tremendous heart in upset after road upset.
The 97.5 million figure represents the game’s average viewership during any given minute. Nielsen said that a total of 148.3 million watched at least some part of the game.
This meant a lot of bucks were flying around.
Fox, a division of News Corp., charged $2.7 million for 30 seconds of advertising time on the game, and that may have been a bargain.
By measuring live viewership, and the number of people who rewound their DVRs, the most-seen Super Bowl commercial was E-Trade’s stock-talking baby, who ended a financial discussion by spitting up, TiVo said.“I didn’t see that punch line coming at all,” said Todd Juenger, Tivo’s research chief.
Pepsi’s Justin Timberlake commercial was second, proving fans either like watching Timberlake, or like watching him sail into a mailbox post crotch-first. The Doritos “Mouse Trap” commercial, from an idea submitted by a viewer, was third.
Too bad most of the game provided very little action.
The fourth quarter kind of more than made up for that.
NFL Football Fan Question Were you one of the record setting 148 million?
Be sure to check out my companion blog at NBA Obsessed.
As always, any NFL Football related comments are welcome.
More blogs about football.
Wow! How interesting it is to see that the top rated programs target a similar audience. Could it be the aged M.A.S.H. viewers who watched this year’s Super Bowl? It seemed as though the Super Bowl received extra hype this year, but who would have thought the final quarter’s viewer ratings would break records?
The MASH watchers do encompass the tail end of the baby boomers and we watch a lot of TV.
TV was different in the time of MASH, less show selection. When MASH came on very little else was on, so you watched it.
The Boomers were kids when the Dolphins went undefeated. Most of us wanted the Patriots not to take that away from us.