Average of 111.3 million viewers followed Super Bowl 2012

The Super Bowl set a US television ratings record for the third year running on Sunday night, with an average of 111.3 million viewers watching the New York Giants’ last-gasp victory over the New England Patriots.Madonna’s half-time performance attracted 114 million viewers, while the average audience for the three-hour finale to the American football season was 111.3 million on NBC.This beat last year’s Super Bowl audience on Fox by 300,000 and was also up on CBS’s 106.5 million for the 2010 event.After holding the record for the biggest US television audience for almost 30 years with 106 million viewers, the 1983 finale of Korean war medical comedy M*A*S*H has been topped three years on the trot by the Super Bowl.The Super Bowl now holds four of the top five spots in the list of most watched US television programs of all time, with M*A*S*H at number four, according to the Hollywood Reporter.