The early numbers from Nielsen Media Research show that more than 106 million Americans watched Sunday's Super Bowl on CBS.
If the estimates hold, they would beat the previous record set in 1983 by the final episode of CBS' "M*A*S*H." The difference, of course, is that the finale of the Korean War comedy ran in an era when network TV was king and there were few other options competing for our attention.
Locally, Channel 58 averaged 411,062 southeast Wisconsin households, a 67 percent shares of TV homes watching at the time, according to finally Nielsen overnight numbers. The audience peaked in the 8:30 quarter hour, with some 446,362 area households, a 68 share.
"Undercover Boss," which aired on CBS after the game and post-game coverage, averaged 217,296 area homes, a 37 share.
Channel 58's 10 p.m. news, which started a bit late, averaged 138,526 area homes, a 27 share and a very healthy number for the CBS affiliate's local newscast.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
