While Fox may have secured the most-watched Super Bowl on record last weekend, its lead-out show set a record of the opposite kind.
Rob Lowe’s game show The Floor was the least-watched Super Bowl lead-out program since viewership for the time slot began being tracked following Super Bowl VIII in 1974.
According to data from Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch, The Floor averaged just 13.94 million viewers following the Philadelphia Eagles’ win over the Kansas City Chiefs last Sunday. That’s down substantially from the 18.44 million viewers CBS retained for last year’s episode of Tracker which aired following its Super Bowl broadcast.
Last November, Fox opted to place Lowe’s show into the post-Super Bowl slot in favor of its original plan to air the scripted drama Rescue: Hi-Surf. Fox has now used its last three Super Bowl lead-outs on unscripted fare; the network debuted a new season of The Masked Singer after Super Bowl LIV in 2020, and a new season of Gordon Ramsay’s Next Level Chef after Super Bowl LVII in 2023.
No doubt, The Floor was hurt by the blowout nature of Sunday’s game — a closer game likely would’ve yielded a larger number. However, it’s interesting to think that Fox only retained approximately 10% of the Super Bowl’s peak audience (137.7 million viewers) just a few hours later.
Next year, it’s likely that NBC will use its lead-out slot to air the Winter Olympics, though there will be no live programming given the time zone difference between the United States and Italy. In 2022, NBC aired live Winter Olympics programming from Beijing following Super Bowl LVI.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.