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True, But Stupid
They’re probably innumerable things to which the post’s title applies, but I am focusing on the following headline: Super Bowl 2024 was most watched US TV broadcast since 1969 Moon landing .
This year’s Super Bowl was watched by an average of 123.4 million people in the US, making it the most watched broadcast since the 1969 Moon landing.
Preliminary US TV ratings put Sunday’s game just behind Apollo 11’s historic landing, which was seen by an estimated 125 to 150 million people.
Gee, I wonder what has happened in the last 54+ years in television viewing? First, of course there has been a massive increase in population. Officially the US currently has ~330 million inhabitants. Unofficially it is probably 10 million or so more than that. The US population in 1969 was about 203 million. So just scaling by population the moon landing viewers would be closer to 200 million just in the US. It has been estimated that 600 million viewers worldwide watched in 1969. That would easily be a couple of billion today.
Second, there has been a massive explosion in the ways in which a “television” event can be viewed. In 1960 the number of sets was about 60 million in the US. Even assuming dramatic growth throughout the decade it is likely that the number was still under 100 million in July, 1969. And television sets were the only way to view anything broadcast. Today, your TV set is many sizes and anywhere in a home; you have computer screens, tablets and smart phones. So the number of devices in the US capable of showing the Super Bowl was many multiples of the TV sets on 1969.
All this is to say that the 2024 Super Bowl –entertaining as it was–was nowhere near the viewing phenomena of the moon landing. Not even close.
When the first Mars landing carrying humans occurs, that event will eclipse every sporting event ever broadcast.
Published in General
Better than false and stupid. The Post is improving.
Wikipedia (here) has two lists, one including the moon landing, and one not including the moon landing. The moon landing estimate does place it at #1.
As an aside, I watched it. Supposedly, according to my parents, who told me that they kept me propped in front of the TV for that purpose. I was less than 2 years old.
Not counting the moon landing, 29 of the top 30 broadcasts were Super Bowls (again, according to Wikipedia). The exception was the final MASH episode at #10. That was in 1983, and adjusted for population, I think that it beats all of the Super Bowls too.
I remember past Super Bowls when it was hyped, but not to the extent it is now. It’s like idol worship – it’s just a game – the ads were lousy this year and I’m not an Usher fan (sorry to sound like a curmudgeon) but the choreographing was very good.
I watched 60 Minutes last week and they had a segment on betting addictions that are affecting a lot of young men because it’s very quick and easy to do on your phone and all kinds of ways to bet. They are betting away college money, and savings and accruing all sorts of debt. When I was in the grocery store last week, I heard a lot of young guys talking about betting on the game…….
Why do you say “stupid”. Why not “True and interesting”?
When I read the headline my initial reaction was: “The headline makes it sound like the 2024 Super Bowl was nearly as important a viewing event as the moon landing. Is that true?” So I tried to find the numbers, which are comparing events over half a century apart. Yes, it is interesting that someone wanted to make the Super Bowl sound nearly as significant as the moon landing. But, to me, it’s a stupid comparison because it really isn’t close enough to talk about being #2.
That MASH episode really was a phenomenon. It came near the end of the time when there was next-to-no cable or videocassettes, just the three networks. That’s also why the numbers for Roots were so incredibly high by today’s standards.
The old line, “Must see TV.”
OK. When I hear “most since <blah>” is not a direct comparison with <blah>, but with everything after <blah>. That said, TV ratings are becoming meaningless. It is a global world of on-demand viewing. The Moon Landing will always a unique American experience.
The final episode of MASH, including original commercials, is available on YouTube. It runs 3 hours. There’s also an “updated” version made into “widescreen” without commercials, but the frame cropping is a problem to me.
We have a TV screen in our living room. I did help my wife watch part of the Detroit/SF game, which used up my quota of pro football for this season. I came in before halftime but then fell asleep until sometime in the 4th quarter, so missed the most interesting part of the game.
I was busy with other things in my office during the Super Bowl, but checked the score on the internet late in the 4th quarter, and then rechecked a few times during the OT. My wife was surprised that I was aware of the game and of who won. I was aware not only of that, but after the game I checked to find out which team had the player with the famous girlfriend. I probably wouldn’t have known anything about that if not for Ricochet.
It might seem odd for someone who doesn’t pay much attention to football to follow a YouTube channel about the history of college football, but I have recently been following this guy’s fascinating stories:
He doesn’t just tell the stories, a few of which I had already been aware of, but he does newspaper and archival research to find out what really happened. His channel is fairly new and deserves a lot more followers than he has so far. In addition to getting better at making videos he is learning that a lot of the stories as commonly told contain a large helping of BS. One of those narratives is about the way Teddy Roosevelt is said to have rescued college football in 1905.
Football would have been pretty risky back then, considering in 1924 Coolidge’s son died from an infection he got from a blister that came from playing tennis on the White House grounds.
Antibiotics and modern dentistry. Don’t time travel without them.
Yet it seems like Doc Brown was more concerned with having appropriate currency!
There’s a site (can recall what it is right now) that compiles the viewing number each year. In the U.S., the top 75 broadcasts are dominated by pro and college football. The only programs that aren’t a form of football are the Oscars, Kentucky Derby, Emmys, and other sporting events (not many of them though; think Final Four). That’s the hold football has on the American public.
Must see tv still applies to some events, but maybe it should be called must see live. In this day of DVR’s and streaming services you can watch programs whenever you choose to do so. For example you can watch 10 episodes of a series even though the series ended months earlier.
Digital storage has eliminated the storage issue of the old film reels.
A friend of mine in Canada had her son – under the age of 10 at the time – spending her income on placing bets using his cell.
She was able to recover the money but only after involving the press.
I’m not able to see the upside of being a parent these days. It seems a lot more complicated than it was just 25 years ago.
I imagine the total number of viewers is exaggerated since the over-the-top number will justify TV commercial costs to increase along with hype and buildup next year. It’s all about marketing and increasing revenue. It really is difficult to believe any numbers, percentages or statistics coming from government or “official sources”.
The numbers have nothing to do with the government. The ratings aren’t a branch of journalism, either. They are a private business in a very competitive field. Neilsen themselves will tell you the raw ratings only mean so much. But they’re the best evidence we have of popularity.
Sure, CBS has every incentive to exaggerate the win. But advertisers, their main customers, have every incentive to push back.
I tend to think Superbowl numbers are bigger that they say. A huge percentage watch at large parties or in sports bars. It seems it would be rather difficult to calculate the large party and sports bar viewers into the equation.
Yes, when families watch they frequently have gathered at just one family member’s residence. No way to know the numbers, it probably looks like one household.
Before I read the rest of your comment I thought you meant she was using her son to place bets. “Tommy. Tommy! Stop playing Roblox and put $100 on Vancouver. Hmm, maybe you’re right Timmy, they won’t cover the spread. So make it a hundred on Winnipeg. Tommy, I know you didn’t just switch to Minecraft before placing my bet. Make the bet or no poutine ice cream for you!”
As I recall from reading stories about ratings stuff over the years, they do apply a “number of viewers” multiple to the “households” – like the way newspapers/magazines inflate their “circulation” numbers over their actual sales – but for something like the Super Bowl they should probably use a somewhat larger multiple to account for viewing parties etc. And by now they probably do.
Back when my son was her kid’s age, roughly 9 to 11, there used to be a major TV ad from one of the major airliners: “Kids fly free!!”
I often thought of loading up Gabe, and two or three of his friends, dropping them of at SF Airport with instructions to go off to the Disneyland Hotel once they arrived in LA. (I’d have needed other parents to cooperate, of course.)
They could take my hard earned money, spend a day or two visiting Disneyland and then fly home.
Some other parent must have tried this because within 45 days or so, the ads began to clearly state “kids fly free with parents!”