NEW YORK (Nov. 6, 2006) -- Sunday night's Indianapolis-New England game was one of the NFL's most-watched prime time games in five years, according to overnight data provided by Nielsen Media Research.
NBC announced that the game drew nearly 21.98 million viewers, topping last year's total of 21.86 million for the Patriots-Colts game on Nov. 7.
Overall, the game had a 14.0 rating and a 22 share. The national rating is the percentage of U.S. television households tuned to a program, and each point represents about 1.1 million homes. The share is the percentage of households watching a broadcast among those homes with televisions in use at the time.
Only three games in the last five years have produced higher ratings and all three involved the Colts. Last year's Pittsburgh-Indianapolis game drew a 14.8 rating, while the Manning Bowl between the Colts and New York Giants in Week 1 and last year's Colts-Pats game each had ratings of 14.3.
