Watching the New Orleans Saints win its first world championship in 43 years was something to watch -- literally by one out of every two people in the United States.
That's how many people it would take for Super Bowl XLIV between the Saints and the Indianapolis Colts to become not only the most-watched Super Bowl of all time, but the most-watched program of all time. And guess what? The National Football League championship game was able to take the prize.
Super Bowl XLIV pulled in 40.5 rating/60 share in Fast National ratings from The Nielsen Co., which according to Zap2it, puts it ahead of "M*A*S*H" on the all-time ratings list.
The series finale of that drama pulled in a 60.2/77 on Feb. 28, 1983, meaning if Super Bowl XLIV's numbers hold through final ratings, that would end "M*A*S*H's" streak at 26 years, 11 months and 20 days. Although the rating number for "M*A*S*H" remains higher, the number of households the ratings represented in 1982 were far less than they are today.
So shifting to number of viewers, Super Bowl XLIV attracted 106.5 million people compared to the 106 million people who watched the final episode of "M*A*S*H." That also shattered the previous sporting event record, Super Bowl XLIII, that attracted just under 100 million viewers between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals.
Although Super Bowl XLIV could end up being "M*A*S*H" in total number of viewers, it's almost impossible for anything to beat the scripted series in actual market share. "M*A*S*H" had 77 percent of televisions that were turned on tuned to the show, while Sunday's big game had 60 percent, still considered an extraordinary number considering shows like "American Idol" only command a 22 audience share.
Those numbers propelled "Undercover Boss," which aired immediately after the Super Bowl on CBS, to the highest non-news, non-event programming numbers of the year, earning an 18.6/32. That beats the best outing of "American Idol" by nearly 11 percent. Of course, "Undercover Boss" is expected to fall hard to more realistic audience numbers when it jumps into its regular time slot.
"Undercover Boss" has helped CBS get an early lead in the first week of February sweeps, when eliminating non-news and non-event programming. The network has an 8.9/15 since Feb. 4 in average overnight, easily beating ABC with a 4.9/8.
After losing the first two weeks of "American Idol" to Fox, CBS has been back in the saddle winning the past two weeks of regular weekly television with a 7.7/13 and an 8.1/13, easily beating both Fox and ABC. Now thanks to "Undercover Boss," it already has a huge lead to begin the week of Feb. 7.
