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It Turns Out That You’re Lying When You Say You Didn’t Watch The Pro Bowl

Even though the NFL has considered scrapping the Pro Bowl, even though everyone claims to hate the Pro Bowl, even though the Pro Bowl is filled with replacement players, you still watched the Pro Bowl. Admit it. Maybe not the whole thing, but at the very least you snuck in a peek or two just to see J.J. Watt line up at wide receiver or some intra-fan brouhahas.

Well don’t worry, you’re not alone. It turns out that NBC outdrew the competition last night, averaging 9.89 million viewers and a 5.9/9 rating, which just edged out the 9.67 million viewers 6.4/10 for CBS. (Quick TV ratings reminder: The first number is the percentage of television-equipped households tuned in, while the second is the percentage of households watching TV that were tuned in.)

HitFix has a full hour-by-hour breakdown of the ebb and flow of the ratings last night, tracking NBC, CBS, FOX and ABC, if you care to check it out. The long and short of it is that “60 Minutes” and its 11.54 million viewers barely outpaced the Pro Bowl’s 11.04 million in the game’s first hour, but by 8:00 p.m. the Pro Bowl was smacking around “NCIS” (CBS), “The Simpsons,” “Bob’s Burgers” (FOX) and “Once Upon a Time” (ABC). By 9:00 p.m. only CBS’ “The Good Wife” hung around as a close second, and by 10:00 p.m. CBS had finally regained the lead with “The Mentalist” as the Pro Bowl came to a close.

And then there’s this terrifying fact:

Nobody claims to watch the Pro Bowl but Sun’s gm out-drew the Heat-Celtics, MD-Duke, MSU-Indiana & the Aussie Open finals – combined.

— Desmond M. Wallace (@MisterWallaceGA) January 28, 2013

Onward and upward, Pro Bowl.

[HitFix]

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