Ratings Weren’t Super For Blowout

Partial Super Bowl ratings suggest enough viewers abandoned the slaughter in the second half to leave the overall audience the third smallest in 24 years, since it turned from a game to a television epic.

The telecast did a 41.2 rating in the top 32 markets. If that number is unchanged when smaller markets report, only the 39.0 for the 1990 game that was the mother of all blowouts (San Francisco 49ers 55, Denver Broncos 10), and the 40.3 for 1992 (Washington Redskins 37, Buffalo Bills 24) would be smaller since 1971.

The rating for the first half Sunday was 43.1 and fell in the second half to 40.5. Part of the slippage can be blamed on alternative prime-time programs during the secondhalf time period. A close game wards off that danger.

“It will still be the biggest television audience of 1995,” Susan Sewell of ABC said Monday.

Indeed. Although unspectacular by Super Bowl standards, any rating exceeding 40 is considered stupendous in prime time.

By the time American Honda’s commercials ran in the waning moments, the outcome had long been decided.

ABC sold ads throughout the game for an average of $1 million per 30 seconds, a record for television. Honda decided months ago to stack all three of its ads in the 90-second commercial time period after the final 2-minute warning. Those were the last commercial slots in the NFL championship game.

The main interest for fans, outside of San Diego’s drive toward a final touchdown that would have allowed it to beat the spread, were looking for new commercials.

The Bud Bowl ended in typically zany fashion with island castaway Iggy beamed in to score the winner for Budweiser. At least it was finished in one ad this year rather than the typical four.

Anheuser-Busch’s ad-makers were freed to concoct other ways to fill its commercial time. They put frogs in a pond croaking Budweiser’s name. They made a mutt with the most Bud Light win a dog show.

McDonald’s concluded a long-running campaign that had two diehard fans arriving ticketless at the Super Bowl. Ex-NBA star Michael Jordan showed up in a cameo role and gave them his tickets, which put them on a sideline bench.

Pepsi-Cola offered a boy who slurped his soft drink so hard he was sucked into the bottle, a man who refused to stop using his crumpled dollar at a desolate soda vending machine and a “Field of Dreams” takeoff.

Frito-Lay parachuted Jason Alexander of “Seinfeld” onto a football field for Rold Gold pretzels.

But for second-half sponsors, the question was whether the telecast would retain its audience even after the winner was clear.

Gerry Rubin, who heads Honda’s ad agency Rubin Postaer and Associates in Santa Monica, Calif., said the automaker recognized the risks of stacking all its Super Bowl ads at game’s end. The time alone cost $3 million.

“We would have preferred that it was a close game, but those are the chances you take,” he said.

Bookies got nervous

“Some people are moving to the edge of the couch,” Al Michaels said near the end of Sunday’s game, a subtle reference to the fact the Chargers would have beaten the point spread if they had completed one of their long tosses to the end zone as the game ended.

McCarver excited

Despite the distinct possibility baseball will open the season with replacement players, Tim McCarver is enthusiastic that his new two-year contract guarantees his presence when the New York Mets’ season begins.

“Baseball’s my passion,” said McCarver, who reenlisted last week with the Mets’ prime station after months of talks. “On Monday, I’m going to Puerto Rico for the Caribbean World Series for the first time.”

He’s happy with his deal, but is ambivalent about the prospect of calling fraudulent baseball.

Replacement baseball, he said, “is reprehensible, but if the team to whom I’m signed asks me, I call them. I’m an employee.

“You’re not going to fool the public by hyping the players. You have to express what their limitations are.”