NFC Championship Game Between Saints, Vikings Draws Monstrous Rating

As the television industry nears a final ratings figure, the viewership situation still looks phenomenal for Sunday’s NFC Championship game between the New Orleans Saints and Minnesota Vikings.

Updated at 1:30PM EST for Time Zone Adjustments

From 7-10:30PM, the game averaged a viewership total of 57.9 million with a 21.3 adults 18-49 rating. Such figures mark a dramatic increase over the viewership totals for both the AFC and NFC Championship games last season and situate Sunday’s game as the second-most-watched NFC Championship contest of all time.

Of note is the fact that while the tightly-contested game did go to overtime, the final half-hour was not independently responsible for the ratings performance. From the get-go, more than 50 million viewers were interested in this matchup.

Few broadcasters opted to go original in their head-to-head battle with FOX’s football game; those that did made absolutely no mark in the ratings.

From 8PM-10PM, ABC offered “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” (7.84 million, 2.4 adults 18-49 rating). NBC presented “Dateline” from 7-9PM (4 million, .7) with a “Figure Skating” broadcast averaging 3.58 million viewers with a .6 rating.