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In your face MASH! – Super Bowl XLIV breaks 27 year old TV record

Written by Robin Hague

The New Orleans fairytale pushes US sports’ biggest night into more than 51 million homes and proves TV ads still work

It was a long time coming and in a marketplace where the average US home has more than 100 television channels, it might never have arrived. However, the come-from-behind underdog victory for the New Orleans Saints propelled Super Bowl 44 into the TV history books, finally defeating the audience record long held by the final episode of MASH.

It was primetime on the 28th of February 1983 when an estimated 106 million Americans viewed the closing, two and half hour episode of MASH on CBS. Nearly half the then US population of 234 million people watched the emotional goodbyes after 11 seasons.

The 2010 Super Bowl, coincidentally also broadcast on CBS, attracted a peak of 121 million viewers, just over a third of the current population of 315 million. However, the achievement of this year’s Super Bowl is hugely impressive when we contrast two very different eras of television broadcasting.

In 1983, there were but three main broadcasters in the US, NBC, CBS and ABC. The average household could choose from between an average of only 10 channels. There was no Internet, no video-on-demand, no DVDs, no PVRs. There were 83 million TV households.

Today, there are nearly 115 TV households in the US, each boasting an average of more than a hundred channels. The Internet is ubiquitous, and services such as Verizon’s FiOS TV offer channels and video-on-demand, while PVRs and media centres mean millions of tech-savvy Americans can just about choose what they want to watch and when.

For a single broadcast to achieve such a massive audience in this kind of television environment is remarkable and it takes something special. Previous Super Bowls have failed to break through the 100 million viewer ceiling, last year’s epic Cardinals-Steelers championship coming closest with an average 98.8 million strong audience.

“The Super Bowl remains the premier television event of the year and is one of the few programs in an era of fragmented TV viewership that can still attract a huge national audience,” said Dave Thomas, Nielsen President, Media Client Services.

But why did this year’s contest break a record lasting only a few days shy of 27 years? For a start there was Katrina, the August 2005 hurricane that devastated New Orleans, cost the lives of at least 2,000 people and flung the remaining population all over the Southern half of the United States. The city’s football team, long-time failures, was part of a recovery process that while far from over, has captivated the rest of the country.

The sheer emotional impact of the Saints at Super Bowl 44 was guaranteed to generate bigger than normal audiences. That they overcame an early 10 point deficit, then defeated the hot-favorites, the Indianapolis Colts, only reinforced the 2010 game’s hold on the public imagination, and remotes.

“This year’s Super Bowl had a compelling narrative, with the underdog Saints coming from behind against powerhouse Indianapolis Colts,” said Thomas. “There was tremendous interest in both the game and the advertisements leading up to [it] and the excitement of the game itself, translated into record ratings.”

Ah yes, those famous Superbowl advertisements, costing an estimated US$2.6 million for each 30 second slot. Such is the fame of these ads, they can be counted on to drag in millions of viewers themselves.

According to TV advertising analysts Ace Metrix, Budweiser’s “Fence” ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgFHJRyz_MA was the most effective Super Bowl commercial, scoring 657 out of 950 in watchability and 645 in persuasion, 626 in all. Ace Metrix measured responses from more than 5,000 people aged 21-60 nationwide.

Second was Doritos “Dog Collar” ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6V-nGkBMrA, with an overall score of 621, then Snickers “Game” commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1Sv_z9jm8A, with 618, Doritos again, scoring 604 for its “Kids Rule ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYyfbeRVM4E and Google in fifth spot for its moving “Parisian Love” commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU, scoring 596.

But just how effective are TV ads in an age when there’s plenty of gloomy research reporting media buyers are fleeing TV, print and radio, heading for the measurement-friendly shores of Internet and mobile placement?

According to Edmunds.com, an online resource for automotive information, there was “a significant boost in site traffic for Hyundai, Audi and Kia since the automakers’ advertising ran during Super Bowl.”

“Hyundai ran the most ads during the Super Bowl of any car company, and enjoyed the most benefit. Traffic to Edmunds.com pages featuring the new Hyundai Sonata was up 594 percent compared to the average Sunday in January. There were also increases in traffic for the 2010 Hyundai Tucson (123 percent) and the 2010 Hyundai Genesis (72 percent).”

“This is yet another major event in which Hyundai achieved major Web site traffic gains through expensive ad placements,” said Edmunds.com Senior Analyst Michelle Krebs, who recalled recent Super Bowls and Academy Award advertising analysis in the company’s AutoObserver.com report at http://www.autoobserver.com/2010/02/big-boost-for-hyundai-audi-from-super-bowl-ads.html. “Hyundai’s marketing team seems to believe that they need to make big splashes to be considered a major player. And, I must admit, their efforts – and those of their product planners – are working, because the company’s image and its market share are growing at an impressive clip.”

There were also significant jumps in website traffic for Audi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq58zS4_jvM, Kia, Volkswagen, Honda and Dodge.

So Super Bowl 2010 was not only super for the people of New Orleans, it showed that big, set-piece TV events can still attract huge audiences and, if properly produced, the ads that go with them can still get into the hearts and minds of the viewer.

Perhaps the last words should go to Alan Alda, star of MASH and director of that final show, who told the New York Times, “we hit it out of the park and so did New Orleans”.

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