While many networks opted to air repeats for the night with the Super Bowl sure to dominate TV screens, PBS decided to continue its trend of scheduling a new episode of Downton Abbey against the game and the ratings show it worked again.
The British drama continued its strong ratings for PBS and were up over last year, reports The New York Times, up to 6.8 million from 2013's 6.6 million.
Even at nearly 7 million viewers, Abbey was still down slightly from last week. For the Jan. 26 episode, the show had 8.2 million viewers.
According to TheWrap, the second-most watched show while the Super Bowl was on pulled in a 1.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic.
PBS tried to increase interest ahead of Sunday to draw in people against the football game. Downton Abbey was promoted through social media with the hastag #DramaBowlPBS. The PBS and Masterpiece joined campaign also asked fans "which team are you on?"
The campaign did show plenty of social media interest, with nearly 1.2 million views through Facebook and 31.5 potential Twitter impressions.
image: Amazon