Ratings: Everyone and Their Moms Watched a Record-Setting Super Bowl and Blacklist

The largest audience in television history learned why you should run on your opponent's 1-yard line instead of throw it (and why a man wearing a predatory fish suit is better than football). NBC's broadcast of Super Bowl XLIX became the most-watched broadcast in television history, beating last year's big game to take the title.

A record-setting 114.4 million people tuned in to see golden boy Tom Brady lead the New England Patriots to a 28-24 comeback against the Seattle Seahawks for the NFL championship in Phoenix, Ariz. That's 2.2 million more people than the previously most-watched TV broadcast, last year's Super Bowl telecast on Fox.

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It shouldn't come to that much of a surprise, considering that the NFL's biggest game of the year has regularly broken viewership records. The last six Super Bowls dating back to Super Bowl XLIV in 2010 make up the Top 6 television broadcasts of all time, ahead of the 1983 series finale of M.A.S.H. Super Bowl XLIX was also the highest rated Super Bowl since 1986, with a 47.5 rating and 71 share across all households.

NBC's post-Super Bowl airing of a special episode of The Blacklist also was a boon for NBC, with 26.5 million viewers tuning in to the James Spader crime drama. It was easily the series' biggest audience to date, which NBC hopes keeps viewers watching when The Blacklist moves to Thursday at 9/8c later this week. The numbers were also the largest for a scripted series on a major network since Ashton Kutcher's debut on Two and a Half Men in 2011.

Did you watch The Super Bowl or The Blacklist?

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