People Watched, Or Did They

The numbers were released earlier this week that the Super Bowl was the most watch television show ever. More than 106 million people watched.

The Neilson Company who does the ratings has 5,000 people across the nation who have black boxes much like what pilots have in cockpits of aircraft. Those black boxes record those 5,000 peoples viewing habits. If you watch any one channel for more than ten minutes in any hour you are deemed to have watched that show.

The Super Bowl numbers broke the record which had been held by the final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983 which had 105 million watchers. If I remember correctly the final M*A*S*H was a one hour final show. The Super Bowl is basically a four hour event.

I personally did not watch the Super bowl from start to finish. I did change channels four or five times and every time I came back to the game I watch at least ten minutes before I turned away. So if I was a person who Neilson had a black box in my house then I watched the Super Bowl at least four times. I would show up on the graphs as four people watching the game.

It took four hours to get 106 million to watch the Super Bowl while back in 1983 105 million watched M*A*S*H in one hour. You know I can make these numbers look any way I want to.

The #1 watched show of all time is still the when Elvis appeared on the Ed Sullivan show back in 1957. 60 million people watch at a time there were only 74 million TV's in this country. That works out 81% of all TV’s at the time watched Elvis gyrate. The second most watch show percentage wise is Lucy Goes to the Hospital in 1953 when 71% of all TV’s watch as little Ricky was born.

Of course back in those days there was only three choices on the TV. So while Elvis had 81% watching, Milton Berle has a bad night on the other channel. By the way did you know that Ed Sullivan had Elvis on because two months earlier Milton Berle had Elvis sing and on that night he killed Ed Sullivan in the ratings? Oh yeah, It is only a myth that Ed Sullivan only showed Elvis from the waist up. All you have to do is go to You Tube and watch an old replay of it.

There are more the 300 million people who live in the good old USA today. Back in the fifties we had around 180 million. We have 327 million tv's in this country or about one for every person. So in my computerized brain doing the new math I was taught back in the 60's only 33% of all tv's were tuned to the Super Bowl.

You would think with all the hype made of the game and all the conversation made about the commercials you would think everyone in America would have at least watched for ten minutes. Only one out of three even watched ten minutes. Maybe the Super Bowl is not as important as we think in the life of every day America.