Record TV Audience Watches Favre's Redemption

NFL News - October 6th, 2009 - Written by John

If you didn't assume it already, Brett Favre's vendetta against the Packers officially resulted in the most-watched cable television show in history last night when he kind of, sort of, stuck it to the Green Bay Packers.

ProFootballTalk leaked a SportsBusiness Daily story Tuesday that the game, in which Favre became the first quarterback to beat all 32 NFL teams, registered a metered-market rating of 14.2. The online sports news site indicates that it probably shattered the record for a Monday Night football game set in 1985 between the Bears and Dolphins, and certainly bested any mark set since the game was switched to ESPN.

It was an improvement of more than 65-percent from last year's Week Four rating, where the Steelers

In the two important markets, it registered a rating analagous to that of an earthquake hitting 6.0 on the Ricter Scale. In Minneapolis it was a giant 58.3 rating and in Green Bay it was 49.7.

It really shouldn't be that big of a surprise, really. Wonderfully marketed games have shattered records every year, including the Super Bowl, which continues to break it's own viewing marks every year. Even Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser said on their popular Pardon the Interruption program, about three hours prior to the game, that they knew the game would set records.

SportsBusiness Daily also said NBC is gaining viewers for it's Sunday Night Football games, drawing in an average of 20.8 viewers this season.

Favre did his part to boost the ratings by saying in January that he wanted to "stick it" to the Packers after being pushed out by the franchise. He retired from the NFL earlier in the year and stayed that way until late August. There were several provisions made by the Packers to prevent Favre from playing for their division rivals, doing everything to avoid last night's meeting.

They had reason to be fearful.

Favre was nearly perfect, throwing three touchdowns and no picks and exploded with excitement upon every score. The Green Bay Packers are now behind the 8-ball in the division, one game behind the Minnesota Vikings with six division games left.

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