‘Blackout Show’ Got Great Ratings

CBS made television history Sunday night when it aired not only the third most watched broadcast of all time, but also the fourth.

Lisa de Moraes at washingtonpost.com writes the No. 3 show was Super Bowl XLVII, which averaged nearly 109 million viewers — a crowd size surpassed only by last year’s Super Bowl XLVI (111.4 million viewers) and 2011’s Super Bowl XLV (111.0 million).

The fourth most watched broadcast in TV history?

Sunday’s Super Bowl blackout.

Number-crunching Nielsen Media has broken out Sunday’s 34-minute game shutdown in New Orleans as a separate show, and given it the name “Super Bowl XLVII Delay.”

“Delay” averaged 107 million viewers.

“Delay” has been trimmed to 30 minutes in Nielsen’s records: 8:41-9:11 p.m., a.k.a. not long after the end of Beyonce’s halftime show – and lasting twice as long as her performance, BTW.

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