Super Bowl Leadouts: Best and Worst TV Episodes to Air After the Game
“What to air after the Big Game?” That is the millions-of-viewers question that faces one broadcast TV network each year, when its turn rolls around to host the Super Bowl.
For Super Bowl LVII, airing Sunday, Feb. 12, 2023 and pitting the Kansas City Chiefs against the Philadelphia Eagles, Fox announced wayyy back in May that the Season 2 premiere of its stealth freshman reality hit, Next Level Chef, would lay claim to the cushiest real estate in the business, leading out of a championship game that should draw around 100 million viewers.
Oftentimes, a Super Bowl broadcaster uses that plum spot to debut a new series or showcase an existing one. Yet while following the Super Bowl invariably brings a supersized audience, it is not always a bellwether of future success. In the gallery below, TVLine has singled out five shows that Fumbled the opportunity… 10 that in one way (ratings) or another (quality) scored a Touchdown… and one that, though highly regarded, merely put up a Field Goal.
But first, some Fun Facts!
🏈 Over the past decade, the program following the Super Bowl has averaged 23.2 million total viewers (in Live+Same Day tallies). The least-watched in that stretch was 24: Legacy premiering out of the 2017 Super Bowl with fewer than 18 million viewers.
🏈 Over the past 25 years, a drama series has been chosen to lead out of the Super Bowl 10 times (most recently in 2021, when CBS launched The Equalizer). Comedies have filled the slot seven times, reality-TV has gotten the nod six times and a late-night talk show claimed the coveted spot once, as did Winter Olympics coverage. Speaking of….
🏈 NBC going with Winter Olympics coverage last year marked the first time since 1976 — when CBS aired the Phoenix Open golf tournament after Super Bowl X — that more sports followed the Big Game.
🏈 The last comedy to air after the Super Bowl was Fox’s pairing of New Girl and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which in 2014 respectively drew 26.3 million and 15.1 million viewers. (Fun fact within a fact: Fox’s Family Guy debuted after the Super Bowl in 1999, and now is in Season 21.)
🏈 Of the last 25 series to follow the Super Bowl, only two wound up not getting renewed that year: CBS’ The World’s Best and Fox’s 24: Legacy reboot.
🏈 Heading into Super Bowl LVII, Fox’s track record is mixed. Shows like The Masked Singer‘s Season 3 opener (27.3 million viewers in 2020), Glee (27 million in 2011), House (29 million in 2008) and The X-Files (29 million in 1997) drew beefy crowds, but the aforementioned 24: Legacy debut dropped the ball and the network’s recurring inclination to go with sitcoms always left millions of viewers on the table.
🏈 Over the past 25 years, a series premiere has been chosen to lead out of the Super Bowl just four times (most recently with CBS’ The Equalizer in 2021) — while in the 28 years before Friends followed the Big Game, a pilot episode got picked 12 times.
🏈 Though that 1996 episode of Friends lays claim to the largest audience on record for a Super Bowl lead-out, CBS’ All in the Family (in 1978) and 60 Minutes (1980) delivered sliiiightly larger shares (47 and 50 percent) of their available audiences.
🏈 ABC’s Alias (in 2003) and CBS’ Elementary (in 2013) were saddled with some of the latest start times (after 11 pm ET) on record for a Super Bowl aftershow. Conversely, the record-setting Friends episode enjoyed one of the earliest kickoffs, airing just a few minutes after 10 o’clock.
🏈 And as far as mutli-time Super Bowl lead-outs, 60 Minutes has had the honor four times and Lassie three, while Survivor, The Simpsons and The Wonderful World of Disney each did it twice.
