That random stat about 'The Office' during Super Bowl episodes blew my mind

I was scrolling through Wikipedia at 2am last Tuesday and found out that 'The Office' (US version) had a 29.5 rating during the Super Bowl episode in 2009. That's almost 30 million people watching Steve Carell eat a hot dog. I had no idea a sitcom could pull those numbers from a football game. Has anyone else found a random fact about a show that totally caught you off guard?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_william22d ago

29.5 rating is actually a 29.5 share of all households with TVs, not 29.5 million people, so the real number is way bigger than 30 million (like closer to 50 million people watching). That Office episode was the highest rated Super Bowl lead-out show since Friends in 1996, which is a pretty big deal for a show that started as a remake of a UK show nobody thought would work. The fact that they held onto those viewers, like annaw73 said, is actually way more impressive than the game night numbers because most shows crash hard the next week (lost 50% or more of the audience). The Office held about 11-12 million the week after, which is a 30% jump from their normal audience that lasted the whole season. That's not just a bump, that's a lasting change that basically saved the show from cancellation since NBC was thinking of pulling the plug before that season started.

tara79322d ago

Honestly, does it really matter that much though... I mean, yeah it's a big number but 30 million people watching anything in 2009 isn't that wild when you think about it. Super Bowl bumps everything, even bad shows get a ton of viewers during that slot. It's like getting excited that a commercial break had a lot of people watching... that's just how TV works. People were probably just waiting for the game to come back on anyway. It's not like it proved 'The Office' was some kind of unstoppable hit on its own merit or anything.

annaw7322d ago

Started reading this book about TV ratings recently and it said that The Office actually had a pretty steady audience before the Super Bowl, like 8-9 million people each week. That's not nothing for a mid-2000s sitcom. The Super Bowl bump was huge, yeah, but they kept a chunk of those new viewers after the game ended, which is what really matters. A lot of shows get the bump and then lose everyone the next week, but The Office's numbers stayed higher for the rest of that season.