Time after time, the Super Bowl pulls in the largest TV viewing audience of the year reaching as many as 114 million people in 2015. With such a large viewership, retaining even a fraction of the audience would boost whatever show follows. Thus, the Super Bowl lead-out slot has turned into quite the commodity by guaranteeing massive Nielsen ratings.
The Big Four Networks have used the lead-out slot to boost viewership of their latest hits like The Office, New Girl, Glee, and This is Us while classics like The Wonder Years, Homicide: Life on the Street, and Family Guy jump-started their runs by premiering their pilot episode. This year, NBC bucks tradition by using coverage of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics as the Super Bowl LVI’s lead-out.
3rd Rock From the Sun (1998) – 33.7 million
From the minds behind That ’70s Show, and Wayne’s World, Bonnie and Terry Turner, 3rd Rock from the Sun follows a group of aliens on a mission to learn more about Earth. To conduct their research, the aliens disguise themselves as a human family named the Solomons. The show’s cast includes John Lithgow, Kristen Johnston, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Jane Curtin.
In the two-part episode “36! 24! 36! Dick!,” Rutherford, Ohio is flooded with a sudden influx of beautiful women who set their sights on any and every man in town. It turns out, these mysterious women are actually invaders from the planet Venus on a mission to steal all of Earth’s goods. It’s up to the Solomons to stop the Venusians before they unleash their mind-washing beer commercial on the Super Bowl audience.
All in the Family (1978) – 35.5 million
Norman Lear’s revolutionary 70s sitcom broke barriers by blending gut-busting comedy with groundbreaking explorations of timely cultural topics. All in the Family centers around the lives of the Bunkers: bigoted patriarch Archie, his loving wife Edith, their free-spirited daughter Gloria, and her hippie husband Mike. Over nine seasons the show collected 22 Emmys and produced iconic spin-offs in Maude and The Jeffersons.
In 1978, CBS decided to use the Bunkers as the first TV family to follow the Super Bowl. In “Archie and the Super Bowl,” Archie is gearing up for a booming day of business on Super Bowl Sunday. His bar, Archie’s Place, is packed with men excited to watch the big game. All of the celebrations are cut short when a pair of crooks rob the bar at gunpoint.
The Voice (2012) – 37.6 million
The Voice is NBC’s play to recapture some of the American Idol magic. This American adaptation of a Dutch reality series follows four coaches tasked with discovering the next great voice. The show is best known for its “Blind Auditions” where coaches have their backs to the singing artists and turn if they are interested in recruiting the talent.
In the second season premiere, coaches Adam Levine, CeeLo Green, Christina Aguilera, and Blake Shelton set off to build their new teams. Standout performances include four-chair turns for Jesse Campbell’s cover of Leon Russell’s “A Song for You” and Tony Lucca’s rendition of Ray LaMontagne’s “Trouble”. Lucca would go on to finish this season in third place. The episode also saw future runner-up Juliet Simms audition with The Beatles’s “Oh! Darling”.
Grey’s Anatomy (2006) – 37.8 million
Grey’s Anatomy follows the daily trials and tribulations of Meredith Grey, an intern and later surgeon at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. Currently, in its 18th season, the show is ABC’s longest-running scripted primetime show ever. Its massive success has kickstarted the careers of Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh, Patrick Dempsey, and creator Shonda Rhimes.
In “It’s the End of the World,” Meredith is faced with one of her craziest days at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital when a patient arrives with a gashing wound on his chest. Hannah, a new paramedic, claims that the only way to stop the bleeding was by sticking her hand in the wound. The situation worsens when it is discovered that the patient has a bomb in his chest and Hannah’s hand is the only thing keeping the bomb from exploding.
Undercover Boss (2010) – 38.7 million
Undercover Boss holds the distinction of being the first reality show to make its series debut right after the Super Bowl. This American adaption follows the format of its British predecessor, an upper-level employee learns more about the lives of their front-line employees by disguising themselves as a new trainee and getting to know the work and the people.
The first episode follows Lawrence O’Donnell, the President and COO of Waste Management, America’s largest trash company. Over the course of a week, Lawrence’s jobs include picking up trash at a landfill, sorting recyclables at a recycling facility, and cleaning portable toilets at a carnival under the guise of “Randy.” Lawrence is shocked to learn the rigorous routines of his employees, their honest thoughts of the company, and is fired from a job for the first time.
The Last Precinct (1986) – 39.7 million
From the duo that created ’80s hits like The A-Team and Hunter, The Last Precinct is Stephen J. Cannell and Frank Lupo’s only attempt at a sitcom. The show follows the misadventures of a precinct of LAPD cops with Batman‘s Adam West starring as Captain Rick Wright. The cast also includes Ghostbusters’s Ernie Hudson.
A distant relative of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the show’s “Pilot” follows a group of police academy misfits forced to work together when they’re all assigned to the 56th Precinct in Los Angeles. Many elements of the pilot episode have aged gracelessly including the treatment of a female cop who is transgender and a guy who discovers he is in a relationship with the mayor’s underaged daughter. The Last Precinct would be canceled after 7 episodes, and would definitely not be aired today.
60 Minutes (1980) – 40.8 million
CBS’s long-running news program 60 Minutes began in 1968 and still runs today. The show stood out for its focus on stories led by reporter investigation. It began airing on Sundays in 1972, occasionally shifted in the CBS schedule due to that day’s NFL game.
Unlike other shows, this is a typical episode of 60 Minutes. It features a segment examining the life and career of actress Bette Davis, a deep dive into the US Thunderbirds, and a look at the Palmer Drug Abuse Program. More memorable would be the last-minute 60 Minutes inserted as the lead out of Super Bowl XXVI in 1992. This shortened episode featured Bill and Hillary Clinton addressing the public discourse around then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton’s affair with Gennifer Flowers.
Raid on Entebbe (1977) – 42.8 million
Raid on Entebbe is another oddity of a lead-out program, the only instance of a network placing a TV movie in the lead-out slot. The film is a dramatization of Operation Entebbe, the real-life 1976 mission where the Israel Defense Forces rescued hostages at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport.
Raid is the second of three different films released in the late 70s covering Operation Entebbe premiering on NBC less than one month after ABC’s Victory at Entebbe. The film was directed by Irvin Kershner shortly before taking on James Bond and Star Wars in Never Say Never Again, and The Empire Strikes Back. It also features Peter Finch in his final role before his death and winning a posthumous Oscar for his role in Network.
Survivor: The Australian Outback (2001) – 45.37 million
Debuting in the summer of 2000, Survivor quickly became one of the biggest shows on television. The reality series puts contestants in a stranded land and has them compete in a series of challenges for the chance to win $1,000,000. 41 seasons later, the show is still running. The Australian Outback stands out for its memorable cast of contestants.
For The Australian Outback, 16 contestants were split into two teams of eight: the Kucha and the Ogakor. “Stranded” starts off by sending the survivors on a five-mile hike to their camps. Naturally, drama ensues between the teammates. For the immunity challenge, tribes must cross broken bridges, climb ladders, and travel by raft to light a torch on a nearby island.
Friends (1996) – 52.93 million
The classic 90s sitcom follows the titular Friends as they find their place in New York City. By the end of its first season, the series was a bonafide phenomenon making trends and household names of its core cast. The special Super Bowl episode recruited giant names to play guest stars including Brooke Shields, Julia Roberts, and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
In the aptly titled “The One After the Superbowl”, Ross is shocked to spot his former pet monkey Marcel in a TV commercial. With this discovery, he sets out to reunite with the marsupial. Elsewhere, Chandler reunites with a childhood friend, Phoebe performs some songs at a library, Joey is mistaken for his Days of Our Lives character, and Monica and Rachel fight for the attention of Jean-Claude Van Damme.
