More than 1 million metro-Atlanta households watched on television as the Falcons’ quest for the Super Bowl fell short Sunday.
Fox’s coverage of the NFC Championship game posted a 45.7 Nielsen rating and a 72 share in the Atlanta television market, meaning the game was watched by an average of 45.7 percent of the market’s homes with TVs and 72 percent of the homes with TVs in use at the time.
The 45.7 rating represented an average audience of about 1.06 million metro Atlanta households for the Falcons’ 28-24 loss to the San Francisco 49ers — the most homes ever to watch a Falcons game locally.
Although the game was not the highest rated on Atlanta TV in Falcons history – three other games, including the 1999 Super Bowl, drew higher percentages of the market’s TV households – Sunday’s audience was the largest in number of households because of the market’s population growth.
The ’99 Super Bowl remains the highest rated locally in Falcons history, posting a 58.2 rating that at the time translated to 1.003 million homes in the Atlanta market according to Nielsen estimates.
Sunday’s game was the highest-rated Falcons home game on Atlanta TV. The audience grew even larger near the end of the telecast, peaking at a 50.4 rating — 1.17 million local households – for the finish.
The game completed a strong season on local TV for the Falcons. The team’s 16 regular-season games averaged a 25.2 rating here, up 13 percent from the previous season. The playoff victory over Seattle on Jan. 13 drew a 39.7 rating here, about 924,000 households on average.
Nationally, Sunday’s NFC Championship game posted a preliminary rating of 26.1, based on overnight figures from the top 56 TV markets. The Baltimore Ravens’ victory over the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship game, which aired in prime time on CBS, drew a 27.9 national major-markets rating.
The Ravens-Patriots game got a 23.2 rating in Atlanta.
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