• by Wayne Friedman , February 3, 2014

A Super Bowl blowout did nothing to dissuade TV viewers from giving the big football event another all-time record as the most-watched TV program in U.S. history.

According to Nielsen metrics, the Seattle Seahawks blowout of Denver Broncos 43-8 earned 111.5 million in total average viewers, besting the 111.3 million number pulled in by the New York Giants-New England Patriots victory in 2012.

Halftime viewing posted higher numbers than the Super Bowl overall -- 115.3 million viewers, a record -- in watching Bruno Mars/Red Hot Chili Peppers. The previous record was with Madonna two years ago at 114.0 million. A year ago, Beyonce pulled in 110.8 million viewers.

There was a record not only for the game itself but shoulder programming -- pre-game, post-game programming -- pulled in high levels.

Pre-game programming earned 23.1 million, a 20% gain over a year ago. Fox postgame Super Bowl results scored high as well -- 65.4 million viewers. For its own TV shows: “New Girl” scored 25.8 million and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” tallied 14.8 million.

With the Super Bowl, Fox now becomes the leading TV broadcast network among key 18-49 viewers with a season-to-date 18-49 average of a 2.9 rating. NBC is second at 2.8.

Fox says its social-media numbers, as they pertain to the Super Bowl, tallied 25.3 million total tweets by 5.6 million authors. From a marketing point of view, a blowout in the game itself didn’t seem to affect TV advertisers -- even as the audience slipped in its final half-hour, down 5%, from its overall average.

Sam Sussman, senior vice president/director of Publicis Groupe's Starcom Worldwide said: “The Super Bowl is pretty peerless from a marketing platform. What makes it unique is that viewers continue to come and watch the commercials.”  

Sussman goes further -- in regard to keeping viewers around late into the game: “For the second Super Bowl in the row, the second-half spots were the highest-performing.”

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