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Sunday Night Football ends American Idol's long ratings streak!!!!!

The final season tallies are in, and after eight years, we have a BRAND NEW #1 show in all of television!!!!

Who is it? Not NCIS (as I was expecting to be) or Dancing With The Stars, but NBC's Sunday Night Football!!! Thanks in part to Super Bowl XLVI being the most-watched broadcast in TV history, they have brought American Idol's eight-year streak to an end as the most-watched show of the season knocking Idol to #2 with The Voice in third. But where was NCIS? They finished 19th for the season, but has outrated Idol during the latter part of the season (Dancing With The Stars, by the way, was 30th).

SNF also marked a major milestone as the first sports series to finish #1 for the season, something Monday Night Football never, ever achieved when it was on ABC (though it is the #1 show on cable for six straight years now). So hats off to not only NBC, but the NFL for what was the most entertaining season on TV we've ever had!
 
CORRECTION: Yes, I posted the 18-49 list; but in terms of total viewership, NCIS was the #3 show (wish it was #2, totally blanking out American Idol) with Dancing With The Stars #5.

So yes, Sunday Night Football is TV's new #1 show in both 18-49s and household viewers overall!
 
First, the NFL takes down the "M*A*S*H" finale as the most-watched program ever. Now, this. What lockout?
 
DToTheJ said:
First, the NFL takes down the "M*A*S*H" finale as the most-watched program ever. Now, this. What lockout?

Good! Just two more great Super Bowl games and M*A*S*H will be out of the top five.
 
No thanks I'll take the mash finale over the GREEDY nfl any day wow a super bowl the biggest event during the whole year beat the mash finale big deal so what!
 
Actually, its a rather big deal that the Super Bowl's are squeezing the M*A*S*H finale out of the all time top programs, because it aired in the pre-cable era, and was fighting far fewer competitor. Getting a large audience to watch any one particular program is quite the accomplishment in this day and age. It speaks volumes about the NFL's cultural significance and reach.
 
I don't know if the Super Bowl or even a short run of Sunday night games can be considered a "show." They're really events...not quite in the same league IMO.
 
benwolf said:
I don't know if the Super Bowl or even a short run of Sunday night games can be considered a "show." They're really events...not quite in the same league IMO.

has there been any scripted event programming since the series finale of Seinfeld? Series finales are no longer events
 
But the measurements are different. If you measure by total viewers of course the Superbowls have more now. There's simply more viewers. If you measure by shares you give weight to older shows, as there was less competition.

If you measure by households it's mixed as a household of one is equal to a household of five.

It's like comparing chart hits. It was greatly altered in the early 90s and it keeps getting altered so you can't measure it. Hits like "Physical," "You Light Up My Life" (10 weeks) and "Bette Davis Eyes" (9 weeks) would have easily been over 26 weeks (half year mark) using the new methods.

If you want a good estimate, shows in the late 70s were the most popular, just because the whole nation was beginning to get saturated in TVs, the population was large and the fragmentation to cable and UHF hadn't taken off yet.

And it's nice to note, by any measure, "The Beverly Hillbillies" Granny and the Jack Rabbit (Granny thinks a kangaroo is a giant jack rabbit) still is the highest rated "non special" program.
 
DToTheJ said:
First, the NFL takes down the "M*A*S*H" finale as the most-watched program ever. Now, this. What lockout?

In a way this is like comparing apples to oranges. The Stupid Bowl is a once-only annual event (like the Jerry Lewis telethon used to be). Both got serious amounts of viewers because it was only on one time (no repeats, syndication etc.). To compare it to a series, even a special finale, which people can assume will be rerun is not a straight comparison. Even in the days proceeding VCR's and DVR's we could assume scripted shows of quality would be shown again or be available as media-based products on VHS/DVD.
 
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