‘Downton Abbey’ season 4 holds up well against Super Bowl XLVIII competition

Clearly, PBS has found a way to do something right against the Super Bowl. While the vast majority of the networks shied away from putting new content on the air against the big game, mostly in fear of getting completely and totally swallowed up, the network is still bold enough to put new installments of “Downton Abbey” out there.

So what do the latest numbers from the network show? While they are down, this is a tradition to keep going in 2015 even with the Super Bowl competition growing every year. Overall, this time around the show drew 6.8 million viewers, and they all had the opportunity to see some shockers as the pregnancy of Lady Edith and also more on the Charles Blake – Lady Mary story. This was a large-enough figure to easily rank the series as the second-most popular on the night behind the big game, and something to further make the network happy with their continued investment with the series.

One of the reasons why PBS is so intent on continuing to air the show at this time is that ultimately, they view it as almost the perfect counter-programming. Also, they don’t really have many other weeks where they have to worry about the ratings, even with the Grammys and the Olympics serving as some competition. The truth here is that the following is loyal enough that it will not jump to other shows all of the time.

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Photo: PBS