parent thread says they looked it up and there were 50 million television sets in 1953.

I remember my late, great mom telling me about the kind of programming that was often on even in prime time in the early 50s. She told me of a memory of a number of people gathered around a TV in fascination watching a barber cut a dude’s hair and talking about hair cutting techniques in the most boring terms. But they were captivated.

Most homes had two, MAYBE, three channels available. That was it.

The game was on Thanksgiving. There’s a decent probability a high percentage of people that owned TVs had them turned on during the game. And the game was likely a lot more entertaining than whatever it was up against.

Let’s say 15 million of the 50 million TV sets were tuned in to the game. And four people, on average, were watching each of those 15 million TVs. That gets you to 60 million viewers. I don’t think that’s a huge stretch given the lack of alternatives at the time.

Let’s say some of my assumptions are off by a lot. You could still easily get to 30 million viewers. Not a stretch at all.