“Puppy Bowl” A Ratings Hit

Animal Planet had no idea what it was onto when it aired its first “Puppy Bowl” seven years ago. It started out as a sort of ‘throwaway’ event to air during the actual Super Bowl, which often results in hemoraging ratings for other networks. So they just put up a couple of hours of dogs on a miniature football field, fighting over football shaped toys, running around like maniacs, napping, you name it. Whatever dogs do.

For its two-hour premiere at 3p, Puppy Bowl averaged more than 1.7 million total viewers, a 60% increase over the previous year during the 3-5p time period. 

The show also included a half time show (cats just sitting around and going nuts of cat toys, and even a streaker! (A Chinese Crested – mostly hairless dog, complete with censorship bar going across his business.)

I won’t lie – I did go back and forth between the big game and this canine frenzy, and it is pretty entertaining. (Insert every football fan’s collective eye roll here.)

The event features dogs available for adoption and results in a great deal of canines being saved via the networks website… which is pretty awesome in of itself.

Finally – a behind the scenes peek at the production: