Super Bowl Sunday is one of the lowest-viewing nights of the year for most networks running up against a game that typically commands the year's biggest TV audience. As in past years, both broadcast and sports nets have a schedule of repeats set to air against Super Bowl XLVIII. Last year, the top broadcast show airing against the Super Bowl was a two-hour repeat of "America's Funniest Home Videos" on ABC. The show averaged 2.2 million viewers from 7:00-8:00pm ET and 2.6 million from 8:00-9:00pm. The top cable show was a half-hour episode of "Rugrats" on Nick, which pulled 2.022 million viewers. Disney's "A.N.T. Farm" from 9:00-9:30pm averaged 2 million viewers. The top cable sports show last year was "World's Strongest Man," which ran on ESPN and averaged 168,000 viewers from 7:00-7:30pm. Speed's top show was "Dumbest Stuff on Wheels" (7:30-8:00pm), which averaged 106,000 viewers. Other notables: ESPN2's top show was the Caribbean World Series (7:00pm-12:22am), which averaged 94,000 viewers; Golf Channel averaged 77,000 viewers for its "PGA Tour" coverage (6:30-11:30pm); ESPNews averaged 66,000 viewers with "SportsCenter Weekend" from 8:00-9:00pm; and NBCSN's "Fight Night" (8:00-10:00pm) averaged 47,000. NFL Network averaged 43,000 viewers for "NFL GameCenter," which aired during the entirety of the game. The lowest average came from MLB Network, which averaged 1,000 viewers for its two-hour block of programming from 8:00-10:00pm -- "Best of Intentional Talk," "Best of Clubhouse Conf." and "MLB Network Countdown."
GOTTA PROVIDE DIFFERENT CHOICES: CBS’ David Letterman talked about the programming options that air opposie the Super Bowl on Thursday's episode of "Late Show." He said, “The Super Bowl is always like 800 million people watching. ... And yet, there are still other TV outlets in business during the Super Bowl. They have to show something. If you take a look at the Super Bowl ratings, invariably it will be like 400 billion people, but yet, over on Channel 2, some other people were watching something else. It’s always like that” (“Late Show,” CBS, 1/30).
