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by Leon Halbert on 3.2.2010 in Advertising, Trends + Surveys 0

Whether it is the lack of quality programming lately or our need to escape the reality of the current state of the economy, politics, wars or devastating earthquakes, record viewing levels have been set for the Super Bowl and the Olympics this year.

This year’s Colts/Saints matchup was not only the most watched in Super Bowl history, but it was also the most watched program in the history of television, eclipsing the long standing series finale of MASH (February 1983, with 105 million viewers) with over 106.5 million viewers.

For the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics that just finished Sunday, February 28^th, NBC Universal is projecting total viewership over 17 nights at over 200 million. Average viewership is estimated at 24.5 million, which outdelivered the other three networks (ABC, CBS and Fox) combined 22.2 million over the same time period. Throw in all of the other cable networks and still, roughly 50% of total TV viewers were watching the 2010 Olympic Games these past two-plus weeks.

This year’s games had the biggest ratings since the 1994 Lillehammer games with the Nancy Kerrigan and Tanya Harding soap opera. Even FOX’s American Idol could not hold on to its #1 rank, coming in second in its time period for the first time since May 2004 to the 2010 Winter Olympics. For example, on Wednesday, February 10^th, over 30 million people watched the Olympics, while nearly 18.5 million tuned into “Idol”.

No matter the reason, February was a great month for sports and for escaping reality, pun intended. Let’s see if CBS can keep it going with the NCAA tournament in March.

Did you notice that the Super Bowl had more than half of the number of viewers in just one evening than the 17-day Olympics? Amazing! Which did you watch? Both? Will you watch NCAA’s March Madness?

*Note: TV Viewership statistics and information came from Nielsen Media Research: http://en-us.nielsen.com/rankings/insights/rankings/television

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