New Orleans Saints Forums - blackandgold.com - Media Power Rankings for January

1. NFL Ratings: Is it the economy (stupid)? The storylines? A statistical fluke? Whatever the factors, the NFL had its most-viewed regular season since 1989-90 and the postseason ratings have been just as impressive.
The Colts-Jets AFC Championship Game on CBS drew a 26.3 rating and 46.9 million viewers, the most viewers for an AFC title game in 24 years. Fox's airing of the Saints-Vikings NFC Championship Game drew a 30.6 rating and 57.9 million viewers, the second-largest audience for any conference title game, behind the 68.7 million viewers for Cowboys-49ers in January 1982. According to Sports Business Daily, the Saints-Vikings broadcast drew the most viewers for any television program since the Seinfeld series finale in 1998 (which attracted 76.3 million viewers). It was the most-watched show in Fox's history, excluding its Super Bowl coverage.
During the regular season, each NFL broadcaster increased its numbers, from ESPN (up 20.2 percent) to NBC (16.7 percent) to Fox (12.4 percent) to CBS (6.1 percent) and the NFL Network (48.4).
"In terms of why the ratings have been so good this year, for many years the NFL had gone through the trend of declining ratings that you see across a lot of other network sports and network day parts," CBS Sports and News president Sean McManus said. "I think this year there was the Brett Favre factor, which last year we were the beneficiaries of when he played for the Jets. That story did not last through the playoff, but this year the Brett Favre story built and built and built and that generated a lot of interest in any game he appeared in. I think the NFC East was also a good story this year. All four teams were in it for a fair part of the season, particularly Dallas, Giants and the Eagles.
"From a broader sense, the game of football gets more and more attractive and more popular every year," McManus continued. "There is something about NFL football when some people have less time to go out of their homes, some people have less money to go out of their homes, some people have more obligations to stay home, it just seems to be the No. 1 attraction. If they are going to watch something on television during the week, they are going to watch NFL football. ... It is an amazing story in television that a sport and a television property can be that successful year after year."
Why is McManus smiling this week? Because his network airs the Super Bowl, which I'll predict will be the highest rated (not viewers, rated) since Super Bowl XXX, when the Cowboys win' over the Steelers game drew a 46.0 rating.