Does that post title sound familiar? Well that’s because you saw it last year right around this time.  Super Bowl XLV attracted 111 million viewers last night, besting last year’s viewership of 106.5 million people to become the most-watched program in TV history. In case you were wondering, the M*A*S*H series finale had already been dethroned by Super Bowl XLIV since it attracted a slightly smaller audience in 1983 (106 million). Super Bowl viewership has climbed every year since 2005 and this year’s marks the fourth consecutive “big game” to set a viewership record. And as Deadline points out, last night FOX became the first network to exceed 100 million viewers (100.9 million) for a night of primetime. Impressive stuff.

And how did the post-Super Bowl Glee episode fare in ratings? Compared to previous years, not that great. Glee garnered 26.8 million viewers, significantly less than what the series premiere of Undercover Boss received last year on CBS (38.7 million). However it did manage to best NBC’s The Office from two years ago (22.9 million). Comparisons aside, this was unmistakably the highest rated Glee episode to date and the most watched scripted series since 2005’s post-Bowl House episode (29 million viewers). Taking a look at the big picture, Glee attracted the third largest audience for a post-Super Bowl scripted series in the past twelve years after a 2006 Grey’s Anatomy (37.9 million) and the aforementioned House ep.

Too bad the commercials and half-time show were nothing to call home about. Needless to say, history was made last night…again.

[Via Deadline]