Final Super Bowl ratings: Best ever

By Rick Porter

February 2, 2009 2:14 PM

UPDATE: The official Nielsen ratings now put Super Bowl XLIII at 98.7 million viewers, which eclipses last year's game and makes it the most-watched Super Bowl ever.

NBC also says that 151.6 million viewers caught a few minutes of the game, which also beats the 2008 game and gives this year's broadcast the No. 1 spot all-time in the "reach" statistic. Final numbers for The Office also rose, from 22 million to 22.9 million.

(Original post continues below.)

The ratings for Super Bowl XLIII weren't as big as they were for Super Bowl XLII. So the game will have to settle for being only the third-most-watched program in American television history.

Sunday's game on NBC, in which the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Arizona Cardinals 27-23 on a touchdown with less than a minute to play, drew an average of 95.4 million viewers. The network says 147 million people watched at least a couple minutes of the game.

Both numbers fell just a little short of the 2008 Super Bowl, which set records for both average viewers (97.5 million, about 2 percent higher than this year's game) and total audience (148.3 million, a scant 1 percent higher than Sunday's telecast). Last year's game also featured a team from the nation's biggest media market (the New York Giants) beating the New England Patriots, who were trying to complete an undefeated season, in the final minute.

The 1983 series finale of M*A*S*H still ranks as the No. 1 telecast of all time with an average of 106 million viewers.

In a year that ratings are down pretty much everywhere, though, the Super Bowl once again showed it was pretty much bulletproof. Its 95.4 million viewers are more than twice as big the No. 2 telecast this season (the AFC championship game on CBS Jan. 18, which drew 40.6 million people).

The news isn't quite as good for The Office, which followed the game and about 20 minutes of post-game show. The hour-long episode, which started at 10:40 p.m. ET, drew 22 million viewers -- the lowest total for a post-Super Bowl show since Alias in 2003 (17.36 million). Still, its total audience and 10.6 rating among adults 18-49 are about double the show's previous series highs. It also hit a 12.5 rating among adults 18-34, the best for any non-sports telecast this season.

The Office also turned in the biggest audience and highest 18-49 rating for an NBC entertainment show since the 2004 season finale of ER drew 23.9 million viewers and an 11.3 in the demo.

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