Capping off a great 10-game postseason average, the Colts-Patriots football game brought in the biggest audience numbers for the American Football Conference championship game in 21 years for CBS (CBS-A). The network is sitting good as they'll broadcast the upcoming Super Bowl matchup between Indianapolis-Chicago.
The average audience for the game was 46.7 million according to Nielsen's preliminary data.
The National Football Conference championship game did great for Fox (NWS) as well with an average of 43.2 million taking in the game between Chicago and New Orleans. That was the largest audience in 10 years for the NFC finals.
For the complete 10-game package, CBS, Fox and NBC (GE) had an average audience of 31.4 million. That was also the best average viewers since 1996.
Viewers for the AFC championship game topped off at 57 million viewers in the final 
minutes of the game.
With the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts being two of the largest national draws for the NFL, numbers are expected to be huge for the final game, with most believing that it will surge past the 90.8 million that watched last year's final between Pittsburgh and Seattle.
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