Super Bowl draws 108.41 million viewers

It drew a huge audience, though last night’s Super Bowl did not break the record for most-watched program in television history.

It was third-best.

CBS’s broadcast of the game between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers averaged 108.41 million total viewers, according to Nielsen, the third-largest audience in TV history.

It finished behind only last year’s broadcast of the Super Bowl, which drew 111.3 million total viewers on NBC, and 2011’s broadcast, which drew 111 million viewers on Fox.

This year’s game did beat the last Super Bowl broadcast on CBS, which had set a record in 2010 with 106.5 million viewers.

It marked the first time in three years that the Super Bowl did not set an all-time viewership mark and the first time in seven years that the show’s audience did not grow year over year.

But it was still an impressive showing considering neither the victorious Ravens nor the 49ers have a huge national following.

The game also may have been hurt by a 33-minute power outage that hit the host SuperDome during third quarter of the game.

CBS’s announcers were knocked off the air for a bit, and the network scrambled to fill the dead time with analysis and sideline reports.

The gap in coverage was not included in CBS’s final Super Bowl viewership tallies. The game officially ran from 6:32 p.m. to 8:41 p.m. and from 9:11 p.m. to 10:47 p.m.

Though it did not snatch the viewership record, the Super Bowl still finished as the second-highest-rated Super Bowl in 27 years, averaging a 46.3 household rating and 69 share.

That was down from a 47.0/70 last year and second-best since the 1986 game between the Chicago Bears and New England Patriots averaged a 48.3/70.

Early numbers based on metered-market household ratings had suggested that this game was on pace to set a record, with the best-ever metered-market rating. But those numbers adjusted downward with the release of this afternoon’s data.

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