Talk:List of most watched television broadcasts in the United States

The Walking Dead
I was reading an article on how the walking dead had around 17 million viewers for season 5 premier in Oct 2014. Wanted to see how to compared to others, which I was able to do, however the walking dead itself is not on this list.

Signed, Lover of Wikipedia, Feb 9 2015 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:252:D09:A00:B1CB:9E92:DC49:885D (talk) 22:55, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Came here to see the same thing.. Also there are no mentions of Game of Thrones either, despite several other HBO shows being on the list.

Can someone explain these omissions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.115.233.210 (talk) 08:55, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on List of most watched television broadcasts in the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070214033217/http://www.quotenmeter.de:80/index.php?newsid=9943 to http://www.quotenmeter.de/index.php?newsid=9943
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20071010102454/http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001805828 to http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001805828

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 15:16, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Ranking numbers for "Most watched regular series finales" are bogus
There are 202 series finales listed in the "Most watched regular series finales" table. Each of those 202 entries is listed in order from highest to lowest rated shows. In the first column is a number from 1 to 202 under the heading "Rank". But there have been far, far more series finale than 202 of them. This table just lists the ones people happen to have added to it and for which ratings information is available. But the rank numbers suggest that, to pick one example, Caroline in the City was the 114th highest rated series finale. This is not true. It is merely 114th highest of the 202 that happen to be listed here. So the "Rank" column is, at the very least, highly misleading and, more likely, seeming to claim something to be true that is not true and for which no source is provided.

The rank column should be removed entirely unless specific sources can be offered to support a rank number. It's pretty likely that the top ten on the list here are the actual top ten, but without some source saying that yes, Family Ties had the tenth highest rated series finale the page has no basis for saying that it is. There could well be some show that has not been accounted for. I offer as an example that this is possible the show Bridget Loves Bernie, which is not on the list. Bridget Loves Bernie ran for just one season in 1972-73 and was the 5th highest rated show of that year with a 24.2 rating. This is the same year that Bonanza had it series finale and drew 19.3 million viewers, yet was not in the top 30 shows of the season. So a number 5 show with a 24.2 rating almost certainly had more than 19.3 million viewers for its final episode. Maybe not enough to make the top 10 series finales, but quite likely enough to make the top 20 and maybe the top 15. The fact that this show exists and most people probably have never heard of it despite its very high ratings when it was on means we really have no way of knowing whether the top ten ranked shows here really is the top ten without some source saying they are. So the whole column should be scrapped. 99.192.73.201 (talk) 01:35, 8 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Seeing no other input and it has been almost a week, I am eliminating the rank colum. 99.192.65.247 (talk) 04:38, 14 March 2016 (UTC) (=99.192.73.201)

Most watched channel by year
I'd like to see a table with the most watched channel by year, with its average annual rating.--181.27.150.229 (talk) 04:29, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on List of most watched television broadcasts in the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://www.webcitation.org/6YifxgqG8?url=http://deadline.com/2015/05/2014-15-full-tv-season-ratings-shows-rankings-1201431167/ to http://deadline.com/2015/05/2014-15-full-tv-season-ratings-shows-rankings-1201431167/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 07:49, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on List of most watched television broadcasts in the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/entertainment/1999/05/27/1999-05-27_power_ratings_for__home_.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130624193612/http://x-files.host.sk/nielsens.php to http://www.x-files.host.sk/nielsens.php/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 15:10, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Changes Made To List
Someone might need to make some adjustments to the list. According to Wiki's own article on the Roots miniseries, none of the episodes had enough viewers to come close to making the list. The replay of Ali-Spinks II was said to have been watched in 90 million in the article from Jet magazine in the links, but the same article puts it second to the last episode of Roots. It seems that the Jet article has inaccurate information, or something is wrong with the data given for the Roots series. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lewgr10 (talk • contribs) 16:15, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, the Roots and Ali-Spinks numbers are incorrect. They refer to the "total viewers", not the average viewers. The M*A*S*H* 105.9 number IS the average viewers, though, as it's total viewers has been reported at 122-125 million. The source for the Roots number says 99 million, not 100, and also reports the Super Bowl's viewership at 110 million (which obviously refers to total viewership as it's 1983). It is imperative that we differentiate between average viewers and total viewers in this article. Heartfox (talk) 19:19, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Missing broadcasts
There are a bunch of things at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-watched_television_broadcasts#United_States which are missing from this article. Like the moon landing. - 2603:9000:E408:4800:BC40:EE1:E9AF:4A4C (talk) 18:07, 10 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Originally broadcast in the U.S. on April 4, 1973, ELVIS: ALOHA FROM HAWAII attracted 51 percent of the television viewing audience and become NBC's highest-rated program of the year, with final worldwide
 * audience figures estimated at 1 billion viewers.
 * How are you not counting this one???? 2603:8080:5D00:1758:8517:53FE:756E:7AE5 (talk) 14:15, 3 April 2023 (UTC)


 * 1957 broadcast of Cinderella, starring Julie Andrews, topped 100 million viewers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella_(Rodgers_and_Hammerstein_musical)Dnrothx (talk) 00:44, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Total Viewership
There should be a seperate group which ranks the broadcasts based on the total estimated number of people that tuned in, rather than the average that stayed throughout as it's missing the oj simpson trial verdict which did 150 million and other broadcasts ArmageddonAmongUS (talk) 05:40, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Non-Super Bowl list is from 1994 article
The source on the list is a 1994 article. I wouldn't be surprised if this is still an accurate top 8, but can anyone find a more recent source? If not should it be called out that the list is from 1994? 68.129.222.109 (talk) 20:07, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Demystifying the moonwalk viewership
In the 1968–1969 television season, there were 57 million TV households in the US per Nielsen. According to Nielsen, the moonwalk on July 20, 1969, received a combined average household audience of 40.13 million from all three networks (ABC, CBS, NBC). Although Nielsen does not list it, that would be equal to a 70.4 household rating (40.13 million is 70.4% of 57 million). In the second link, Nielsen does not provide an average number of persons 2+ for the moonwalk. However, the 40.13 million household audience would need to be tripled in order to meet the purported 125 million persons 2+ figure. This is highly unlikely as you can see from the listed examples that no average persons 2+ figure listed for these events has done so, nor has any Super Bowl. Per Nielsen, The 1969 Super Bowl had a 36.0 household rating and 41.66 million persons 2+. Doubling the household rating from 36.0 to 72.0 (around the same as the moonwalk's 70.4 rating) would theoretically mean the moonwalk viewers would be about 84 million if the average viewers per household was the same. The 1969 Super Bowl persons 2+ audience (41.66 million) was about double the household audience (20.52 million). According to the US Census, there was an average of 3.19 people per household in 1969. 40.13 million households x 3.19 people per household = 128 million average viewers, assuming every person in each household was watching the whole time, which is impossible. Were more households watching the 1969 moonwalk "together" than they have for every Super Bowl? Perhaps, but I highly doubt to the extent of 125 million, and it was certainly not 150 million. Until Nielsen reports an actual person 2+ average viewership number for the moonwalk, this is best left as a note atop the table as it is likely highly inflated and incomparable to the other figures, which would mislead readers. Heartfox (talk) 06:40, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Most watched
According to IMDB and my memory, Elvis: Aloha from Hawaii (which is in the United States), in 1973, had 1.5 BILLION people watching which blows all these Super Bowl's out of the water. Wonder why it is not listed. 2601:19B:C601:90B0:E4B1:2BE7:E0DC:2FFB (talk) 13:37, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

OJ Simpson chase?
95 million people watched it; why is it not listed? 24.13.31.33 (talk) 18:17, 11 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Nielsen didn't officially state a figure for it, it came from a estimate by CBS. According to Nielsen Media Research the trial verdict of OJ Simpson however registered a share of 91%, meaning it should be on here Never17 (talk) 22:12, 26 April 2024 (UTC)