Ratings Archives: Week of January 19, 1998

It is SUPER BOWL WEEK in 1998 and NBC dominates the week's ratings, more than doubling the ratings ABC earned for the #2 spot.

NBC posted a weekly average rating of a 16.1 mark, obviously lead by Super Bowl XXXII. the game featured the +Denver Broncos beating the +Green Bay Packers by a score of 31 - 24. The game its self drew 90 million viewers and a household rating of 44.5 and a 67 share. The post game kept just under 65 million of those viewers and still held 50% of all households watching TV at 10 p.m., ET.

The post Super Bowl program for 1998 was 3RD ROCK FROM THE SUN. Byt the time it aired, it is 10:30 p.m., ET. The episode drew 33.7 million viewers and a 34 HH share. nearly 20% of all TV households are still with NBC though the episode.

When you combine Must See TV with the Super Bowl, in the same week, you get NBC posting 9 of the top 10 shows and 16 of the top 20. ABC managed three top 20 programs, lead by HOME IMPROVEMENT at #9. CBS' lone charting program was DIAGNOSIS MURDER (#16), which airs opposite of SEINFELD.

The WB has a good week, when compared to UPN. The Frog Network drew an average rating of a 3.4, while UPN was only able to post a 2.7 rating. When you consider that the WB aired programs opposite the Super Bowl, winning the battle of the net lets looks even more impressive.

Because of the big game on Sunday night, FOX's big guns were all in repeats.

The week of specials was limited, but NBC did manage to gather 16.9 million viewers, on a Saturday night, to watch the World Skating Championships. That was good enough to rank #16 for the week, tied with DIAGNOSIS MURDER.

Nielsen Broadcast ratings chart for the week of January 19, 1998