Which Had the Most Viewers: The "Seinfeld" Finale or Avatar?
By Dustin Rowles | Seriously Random Lists | July 19, 2010 | Comments ()
Most folks who follow movies at all probably know what the top three box-office grossers of all time are: Avatar, Titanic, and The Dark Knight. People with a little common sense probably also know that those three are not reflective of the top three in attendance all time, too. In fact, they’re not even close (and only Titanic breaks the top ten, of the three).
But another thought occurred to me over the weekend: How does television viewership stack up against movie attendance? I’d never really contemplated those numbers, but I assumed — given the free nature of television — that, by and large, a higher rated show probably had a lot more viewers than a blockbuster movie had in attendees.
Well, I came to this conclusion: Based on 2010 average non-3D ticket prices, it takes about 15 million attendees for a movie to make $100 million. Fifteen million is also the average viewership for the tenth ranked show of the 2009-2010 television season: “Dancing With the Stars Results Show.” That also means that, in 2009, around 45 million people saw Twilight: New Moon, which is nearly twice as many people who watched “American Idol” on a weekly basis. Let’s take a smaller movie that most folks liked, like (500) Days of Summer, and we can extrapolate that it had around 4.8 million attendees, which is about how many people watched “Boston Med” last Thursday (which was about 3 million viewers less than its time-slot competition, a repeat of “The Mentalist”). That’s kind of dispiriting for both “Boston Med” and (500) Days of Summer.
Anyway, below, I’ve outlined the number of people who attended the top grossing films of all time, the top attended movies of all time by number of attendees, the highest rated television series finales of all time in number of viewers, and last year’s number of viewers for the top ten shows of the season. You can draw your own conclusions from those numbers, but in answer to the above question: About five million more people saw Avatar than saw the “Seinfeld” finale. But nearly twice as many people saw the highest attended film of all time than saw the highest viewed television series of all time.
A couple of interesting notes, which you can add to: The Phantom Menance had 18 million more attendees than did The Dark Knight (boo!), twice as many people saw Doctor Zhivago than did Revenge of the Fallen (yay!), and 1967’s The Jungle Book looks to be the most attended animated film of all time, drawing 50 million more attendees than the highest-grossing animated film of all time, Shrek 2. Also, if the “Friends” finale were a movie, it would’ve grossed around $350 million at the box office today.
The Top Ten Grossing Films of All Time
1. Avatar: 81.5 million attendees
2. Titanic: 123 million attendees
3. The Dark Knight: 70.6 million attendees
4. Star Wars: 197 million attendees
5. Shrek 2: 74.2 million attendees
6. E.T.: 150 million attendees
7. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace: 88.3 million attendees
8. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest: 64.6 million attendees
9. Spider-Man: 69.5 million attendees
10. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: 62.8 million attendees
The Top Ten Movies Based on Attendance of All Time
1. Gone With the Wind: 206.4 million attendees
2. Star Wars: 197 million attendees
3. The Sound of Music: 153.5 million attendees
4. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial: 150.4 million attendees
5. The Ten Commandments: 131.7 million attendees
6. The Jungle Book: 125.3 million attendees
7. Titanic: 123.2 million attendees
8. Jaws: 122.3 million attendees
9. Doctor Zhivago: 121.8 million attendees
10. 101 Dalmatians: 119.7 million attendees
The Ten Most Watched Series Finales
1. M*A*S*H: 105.9 million viewers
2. Cheers: 80.4 million viewers
3. Seinfeld: 76.3 million viewers
4. Friends: 52.5 million viewers
5. Magnum, P.I.: 50.7 million viewers
6. The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson: 50 million viewers
7. The Cosby Show: 44.4 million viewers
8. All in the Family: 40.2 million viewers
9. Family Ties: 36.3 million viewers
10. Home Improvement: 35 million viewers
Top 10 Shows of the 2009-2010 Television Season
1. American Idol: 24.7 million viewers
2 American Idol Results: 23.4 million viewers
3. Dancing with the Stars: 19.7 million viewers
4 NBC Sunday Night Football: 18.7 million viewers
5. NCIS: 18.6 million viewers
6. Undercover Boss: 17.7 million viewers
7. The Mentalist: 16.8 million viewers
8. CSI: 15.8 million viewers
9 NCIS: LA: 15.6 million viewers
10. Dancing with the Stars Results: 15.2 million viewers
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