BTW, we're still #1.
Saints in OT killed
By MICHAEL STARR
Posted: 12:53 AM, January 26, 2010
The Jets might have lost their bid for the Super Bowl -- but they were ratings winners all the way.
Gang Green's 30-17 loss to the Colts Sunday was the most-watched AFC Championship game in 24 years, snaring nearly 47 million viewers on CBS (3-6:15 p.m.), according to Nielsen.
Those are the best numbers since the Patriots-Dolphins AFC Championship game in 1986 (48 million viewers).
Sunday night's Saints-Vikings game on Fox was even more impressive from a viewership standpoint.
That game, a heart-stopping 31-28 overtime victory for the Saints, sending them to their first-ever Super Bowl, drew a whopping 58 million viewers -- the most-watched conference championship game since Dallas-San Francisco in 1981 drew 69 million viewers on CBS.
It was also the most-watched non-Super Bowl telecast since the "Seinfeld" finale in May 1998 (76 million viewers).
The Fox game went through the roof in New Orleans, where it averaged a whopping 63.2 rating -- believed to be the highest local rating ever for an NFL game on one network.