An estimated 128.9 million Americans saw all or part of Super Bowl XXXI on TV, making it the fourth-most-watched program ever, Fox said Monday.
As expected, the football game between the Green Bay Packers and New England Patriots also gave Fox the highest ratings in the network's 10-year history.Fox said the only programs with bigger audiences were three other Super Bowls - in 1996 (Dallas vs. Pittsburgh), 1994 (Dallas vs. Buffalo) and 1993 (also Dallas vs. Buffalo).
On a pure ratings basis, though, Super Bowl XXXI was less impressive. Sunday's game had a 43.3 rating, Fox said, placing it in 17th place among Super Bowls.
Last year's Super Bowl, on NBC, had a 46.1 rating. The 1982 game between San Francisco and Cincinnati remains the highest-rated Super Bowl, at 49.1. It was on CBS.
The discrepancy between numbers of viewers and ratings is due to population growth. Each ratings point is 1 percent of the total number of households with TV sets, and that number keeps rising. Though the Super Bowl ratings have declined slightly since the mid-1980s, they represent a smaller slice of a growing pie.
By the way, Fox ended its pregame show Sunday with a "pep talk" from Kenneth Branagh's film version of "Henry V." Who but Fox would have added English subtitles to Shakespeare?
-"Dilbert" creator Scott Adams recently told TV Guide that he's a big fan of the sci-fi series "Babylon 5." So - what the hey? - the show's executive producer, J. Michael Stracynzki, offered Adams a cameo appearance on "Babylon 5," and Adams quickly accepted.
Adams is due in Los Angeles next week to film the episode, which will air in May. And how was the offer extended and accepted? All by e-mail, of course.
-Tragic news from ResponseTV, a trade magazine that tracks the exciting world of infomercials. Seems that when the numbers were sorted out, infomercial billings for the third quarter of 1996 were down 28 percent from a year earlier.
The downturn is attributed partly to a lack of breakthrough products. I'd tell you more, but my super memory powers are ebbing, my abs are sore and I can't reach my psychic hotline service.