
Re: The greatest television episodes of all time
Thegun wrote:
The finale of The Fugitive was watched in the most households ever until the Superbowl three years ago, even more than the Mash finale.
Well that's not true, The Fugitive finale was seen by 25.7m households compared to 50.2m households for the MASH finale (among a whole slew of other programs that were also watched by a greater number of households than The Fugitive finale). Did you mean household rating? Which is really just a percentage of the total households in America that own a TV set There it's closer, but even then MASH is on top (60.2% vs. 45.9%).
I do believe the highest household rating in Nielsen's history was Elvis Presley's appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956 (82.6%) but obviously it was a lot easier to capture a higher percentage of the population that owned TVs back then (I Love Lucy's 2nd season
averaged a 67.6% rating for all episodes, lol, today a program is a blockbuster with a 13.0% average household rating). Conversely, though, it became easier to set viewership records up through the 80s due to increased TV-owning population/general population growth -- e.g., that 82.6% rating back in 1956 translated into "only" 60m viewers whereas the 60.2% rating from MASH in 1983 resulted in 105m viewers.
And now of course since the peak of viewership back in the 80s the decentralization of TV (and entertainment options in general) has caused viewership to be diffused, and stuff like DVR only hastened that decline of both measures (household ratings
and number of viewers).
"Bart Gets an F"
is the most-watched Simpsons episode in history (33.6m viewers | 18.4% household rating), though, and I'm fairly certain it's the most-watched scripted program in FOX history as well.