Super Bowl Breaks Record, Most-Watched Program In TV History
The National Anthem may have been sung wrong. The first half wasn't the most exciting half of football. The half time show was a bit of a disappointment.
But despite all that, more people watched Super Bowl XLV than any other program in TV history.
Green Bay's victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl has surpassed last year's record-setting game in the Nielsen Co.'s preliminary ratings measurement of big cities.
The 2010 game between New Orleans and Indianapolis established itself as the most-watched program in U.S. television history, with 106.5 million viewers.
Nielsen didn't immediately have a viewership estimate for Sunday's game. But in an overnight measurement of the nation's 56 largest media markets, this year's game had a 3 percent higher rating than last year's.
The game also had a 71 share - meaning that more than two-thirds of the televisions being watched in the country at that time were watching the Super Bowl on the Fox network. That's the highest audience share for a Super Bowl since 1982, a time when there were far fewer television networks as competition.
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