• by Wayne Friedman , February 4, 2013

The Super Bowl looked to be on track to pull in another historical TV record. But not this time -- not even second best.

The close game, where the Baltimore Ravens won over the San Francisco 49ers, pulled in a Nielsen 108.4 million viewers. The best Super Bowl ever -- and the best individual U.S. TV telecast ever -- came a year ago, when the New York Giants-New England Patriots got 111.3 million viewers.

The second-biggest game was the 2011 Super Bowl -- with 111.0 million viewers.

The Super Bowl has been posting regular all-time TV viewership records every year since 2006.

CBS did get one early record with Nielsen preliminary data of a 48.1 household rating/71 share in top metered markets -- 1% higher than the New York Giants win over New England Patriots, which pulled in 47.8/71.

At press time, no Nielsen viewership data was available for the 34-minute power outage during the game. For its part, Rentrak says "audience levels remained stable and even grew through the 34-minute blackout."

As usual, there were many polls and surveys after the Super Bowl for brands and for new digital media.

One social media research measure, according to Trendrr -- in terms of Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue and Viggle activity -- had the Super Bowl XLVII tallying 52,556,473. A year ago, Trendrr says the Super Bowl number was 15 million and 3 million for the 2011 game. 

A day after the game, on Monday, the Super Bowl was still the highest in terms of messaging among all TV shows -- 279,301.

Networked Insights says the most tweeted brand on the night was Go Daddy's "Perfect Match"  (255,121); Taco Bell's "Viva Young" was next (213,125); Calvin Klein's "Concept 30"  (209,539; AB InBev "Brotherhood"  (154,037); Dodge Ram "Farmer" (96,326); Oreo "Cookie vs. Cream" (65,373); Wonderful Pistachios' "Crackin' Style"  (58,938); Tide's "Miracle Stain"  (55,770; Doritos' "Goat"  (51,053); and Doritos' "Fashionista"  (47,962).

But that didn't tell the whole story: Networked Insights says Tide's "Miracle Stain" had the most positive viewer reaction (59% net sentiment), while Go Daddy's "Perfect Match" had the most negative reaction (--11% net sentiment).