Print PageThe Nielsen company said Wednesday that 47.7 million people watched the Baltimore Ravens win entree into the Super Bowl by beating the New England Patriots. The 42 million who saw the NFC championship between San Francisco and Atlanta was down sharply from last year.
Still, networks increasingly rely on big live events to make up for dwindling regular viewing caused by DVRs and increased competition. Football is the most dependable: more than half of the shows that reached 20 million viewers since September 2010 were NFL games.
