The numbers are in and as expected they are monstrous.  FOX’s relentless anniversary promotion combined with the highest scoring playoff game in NFL history prompted 21.07 million people to watch last night’s Zombie Simpsons.  According to TVbytheNumbers that number is likely to change somewhat (probably down, if I read it correctly) because the Packers/Cardinals game didn’t finish until after 8pm.  So we’ll update this when the final numbers are available.  By 8:30, when Spurlock’s thing was supposed to start, the numbers were down to a still large, but by no means enormous, 13.46 million. 

I’ll do the math when the final number is known, but this one night might be enough to prevent Season 21 from being the lowest rated season ever.  Season 20 did terrible in the spring and Season 21 will need to do even worse to get the Season 21 average below Season 20’s 7.12 million. 

Update 14 January: The final numbers are in and as expected they were revised down significantly.  The final number for that awful episode was 14.62 million viewers.  It’s still the top rated episode since the post-Super Bowl one back in 2005, but not nearly as huge as originally thought.