Last nights Super Bowl victory of the New Orleans Saints over the Indianapolis Colts was watched by more people than “any scheduled program in U.S. TV history,” topping the 1983 finale of M*A*S*H, the previous record holder, according to an article by Dave Walker in The Times-Picayune. I’m not surprised. This article lists a number of reasons, all of which came into play, I’m sure.

But ultimately I think a lot of it had to do with the Saints being the New Orleans Saints, a team representing a city and region devastated by Hurricaine Katrina but more so by the failure of the levees meant to protect it, which then was further let down by and inept and slow response to the crisis. It had to do with a team that were the perpetual underdogs. Founded in 67, their first playoff win wasn’t until 2000, and they had never won a league championship before this year. (Somebody who follows football more closely correct me if I’m wrong.) In 2005 after Katrina and the damage done to the Louisiana Superdome, there was a fear that New Orleans might actually loose its team. It’s offices had been moved to San Antonio and many of its home games were played there. San Antonio wanted to keep it that way, and it seemed owner Tom Benson was considering it.

Many fans in Louisiana were angered and felt that Hardberger and Perry were taking advantage of New Orleans’ misfortunes to try to steal the Saints. Benson’s actions also drew the anger of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who called Benson’s actions shameful and disrespectful to New Orleans fans who have supported the team for nearly four decades of mostly losing seasons.

In the end the Saints did come home and now they are Super Bown champions. It was exciting to watch.
Here’s a little history set to music:

On a completely different subject, I was intrigued to learn that Nielson ratings don’t include people watching in public places.
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In New Orleans, the overnight ratings for WWL-TV’s Super Bowl broadcast fell short of the all-time mark set by WVUE-Channel 8 with the NFC Championship Game, which had a 63.2 local rating/82 share – the largest local rating in NFL post-season history, according to Fox.
Sunday’s game had a still-huge 56.3 rating, 82 share here. Each rating point represents 1 percent of total TV households, or about 6,340 homes. Share is the percentage of viewership in homes with a set in use.
“Does this mean less people actually watched the Super Bowl than the NFC Championship Game?” said Joann Habisreitinger, media director for Zehnder Communications in New Orleans. “I’d bet my life that’s not the case.
“The reason for the ratings difference is due to two key factors. One, a bunch of Who Dats in Miami not contributing to local viewership, and two, Super Bowl parties where large groups of people gathered in other people’s homes or outside of their home (such as in bars) where their viewership was not measured and therefore did not contribute to the Nielsen rating.

With big screen TVs and surround sound systems, watching television, and especially sporting events because people like to catch them live, is very often done in groups. In fact, I find it’s also true of awards shows, political events like elections or major speeches by the President, even American Idol, or anything that people want to know about as it happens. More and more people are watching “scheduled” tv at their convenience, be it online for free at a network site or site like Hulu; on their DVR; downloaded legally from iTunes, Amazon, or other sources; or illegally from an even larger number of sources. My more patient friends even wait for the DVDs.
So isn’t as valuable to know how many eyeballs see that advertisements as it is to know how many televisions sets are tuned to them. We talked about the ads and about the game last night at our gathering, so we watched them. (The consensus by the way, we were puzzle by all the underwear in the ads, even though the ads weren’t for underwear.) I’m not sure how Nielsen would measure eyeballs and that’s probably why they don’t. But to not do so must really skew the numbers, especially for broadcasts people might be inclined to watch live and with friends.