super bowl ratings

The New Orleans Saints have another big win to celebrate just one day after claiming the Super Bowl crown: the title of ratings champion.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, last night's Super Bowl broadcast grabbed a crushing 46.4 rating and 68 share for the Saints 31-17 win over the Indianapolis Colts. Those numbers are up eight percent over last year's game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals, which is particularly impressive considering that broadcast set a Super Bowl record with 98.6 million viewers.

Even more impressive: this year's total of 106.5 million viewers is the largest television audience in American history, just edging out the previous record set by the 1983 finale of 'M*A*S*H.'

It looks like a lot of people were curious to see if the New Orleans Saints could beat the Indianapolis Colts in their first Super Bowl appearance (spoiler: they did). Or maybe they just wanted to see if Abe Vigoda was still alive or what a bunch of guys walking around in their underwear looked like. Either way, the CBS broadcast of the game got the best household numbers in 23 years, up 10% from last year's game that...well, no one really remembers who played last year.

That's pretty good considering there wasn't a nipple in this year's game.

It's not hard to see great ratings for the game most years though. TV networks usually don't air much opposite them. Last night, for example, ABC and FOX ran repeats of their comedies while NBC had repeats of 'The Biggest Loser.'

My roommate is incredibly upset about what happened to The New England Patriots on Sunday night. He now has to get his "19-0" tattoo removed via laser, and that's going to be painful.

But I'm not here to rehash the game and what happened and what should have been done, I'm here to talk about the ratings for the game. The FOX broadcast actually garnered the highest rating for the Super Bowl ever. 97.5 million watched the game (a 37.6 rating), according to Nielsen. This makes it not only the most-watched Super Bowl game, but also the second most watched show in TV ever, just behind the M*A*S*H finale in 1983.