Confirmation that football is THE single most important thing on the face of the earth came with the news that nine of this year’s top ten TV programs involved the sport. The most watched TV primetime programs with more than one episode may well involve people attempting to carve out a career in the pop music industry but the big prizes are taken by football.
Nielsen’s most watched program of the entire year was the Green Bay Packers v Pittsburgh Steelers in FOX Super Bowl XLV with over 111m viewers. Second to this was the FOX Super Bowl XLV Kickoff with 69.6m viewers and rounding it off for the Bowl was the Post Game show with 66m. Now just to find out where the 55m went before and after the game. If you see any of them give us a buzz. We’ve a bounty on them, dead or alive.
Elsewhere on the list the AFC Championship on CBS (54.8m), FOX NFC Championship (51m), AFC Divisional Playoff – Sunday CBS (43.4m) came 4th, 5th and 6th on the list respectively. AFC Championship Pre-Kick on CBS (39.4m) and FOX NFC Wild Card Game (39.2m) were in 7th and 8th before the first non-football broadcast on the list registered on the top ten as ABC’s Academy Awards entered the list at number nine (37.9m). Rounding off the top ten was FOX Super Bowl Pre-Game with 35m.
If the “football ain’t dat popular” camp needed to be convinced that the sport is number one in the US then this is near enough the best that could be hoped for. Now the NFL just needs world domination on top of North America. That and being able to decide if sports-betting exists. It is a bit of a chicken and egg moment if you ask us.
It’s interesting to note that all these occur in the first two months of the year, which must mean one of two thing’s are true. Either everyone throws their TV sets out of the window in the early part of the year or their brains literally turn to moosh and they can’t take anymore. You decide…
