The Wall Street Journal-20080205-Fox Scores Super Bowl Record- 97 Million Viewers
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Fox Scores Super Bowl Record: 97 Million Viewers
Full Text (460 words)Sunday night's down-to-the-wire Super Bowl XLII drew the biggest television audience in the sporting event's history, with more than 97 million viewers tuning in to the Fox network to watch the New York Giants defeat the New England Patriots 17-14, according to preliminary numbers from Nielsen Media Research.
An episode of the medical drama "House," which followed the Super Bowl telecast, drew its highest audience ever, with 29 million viewers, making Sunday the most-watched night to date for Fox since the network's launch in 1986. The game was the second-most-watched TV show of all time, behind the final episode of "M*A*S*H" in 1983, which drew 106 million viewers. The previous most-watched Super Bowl was in 1996, when just over 94 million viewers tuned in to NBC to watch the Dallas Cowboys beat the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Mammoth nights are fewer and farther between for the once-dominant broadcast networks; cable channels and the Internet have fragmented their audience, which in the early days of the Super Bowl had few other options. The Hollywood writers strike has made this season particularly bleak when it comes to big-tent events, wiping the most popular scripted shows off the air before their climactic finales and dimming the lights on one of television's major draws: the Golden Globes.
That makes the few times networks can draw a huge crowd all the more valuable. Fox, which broadcasts the game every three years in rotation with General Electric Co.'s NBC and CBS Corp.'s CBS, got lucky this year, with two teams from major markets going head to head and the storyline of the Patriots chasing a perfect season. The network capitalized on that narrative by adding trappings meant to appeal to more casual (and female) viewers, including a red-carpet pregame ceremony hosted by "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest, aimed at viewers pining for the lost awards shows.
The network also benefited from an especially close game, said Fox Sports President Ed Goren. The audience built over the course of the game, topping out at around 130 million viewers in the minutes near the end, he said. Advertisers paid a premium to reach those viewers, shelling out around $2.7 million for a 30-second spot.
"The sports television marketplace is hot right now," Mr. Goren said.
Official ratings for the four-hour broadcast won't be available until today because of a standard delay in collecting data, but a Nielsen spokesman said the numbers aren't expected to change significantly. The early data available yesterday -- known as the "fast nationals" or the "fasties" -- assume that the broadcast went as planned, without disruptions such as local news alerts. The final numbers will reflect any unforeseen complications.
News Corp., which owns Fox, also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
