Ok, granted that's not that surprising. Two great teams with likeable stars, big play potential, and both ranked number 1 in their respective conferences coming into the game...who wouldn't want to watch that? (oh and commercials too)
What does surprise me about this is that before Sunday night the former highest watched television program ever was the 1983 series finale of M*A*S*H. According to data taken from AdAge, that final episode of M*A*S*H had 105.9 million viewers. I'm aware that M*A*S*H was a popular show and I'm aware that the series finale was 2.5 hours long and produced like a movie, but where the hell did all of these people come from?
*Quick point of perspective, Seinfeld another extremely popular network show had 76.5 million viewers tune in for its season finale.
I think what amazes me most is that in 1983 TVs sucked. They will big, curved screened, analog signaled boxes...and they were expensive. Also, there is no way the Americans had the same number of TVs then that we do now and the population of the US was significantly smaller. All of this makes M*A*S*H's finale viewership all the more amazing.
The Super Bowl had a reported 106.5 million viewers this year, which in the grand scheme of things really only shows that it barely beat M*A*S*H.
Anybody know why so many people tuned into M*A*S*H in 1983?
Anybody have an opinion on how the internet might have effected these numbers as well?
Amazing things happened in 1983, like my birth...
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