Sunday’s Super Bowl achieved a national Nielsen...

Sunday’s Super Bowl achieved a national Nielsen rating of 48.3, making it the No. 3-rated Super Bowl ever.

The highest Super Bowl rating was a 49.1 for the 1982 game between San Francisco and Cincinnati. Second-highest was a 48.6 for Washington and Miami in 1983.

Because the country has more homes with televisions today, the game did set a record for most households viewing a Super Bowl. According to Nielsen figures, the game was watched in 41.5 million homes. The viewing audience was estimated to be 120 million, which is also a Super Bowl record. Only the final episode of “M*A*S*H” had more total viewers, NBC said.

At 3 p.m., 40 minutes into the game, the Super Bowl had a 49.8 rating. But instead of building viewers, as often happens in close games, the rating fell to 47 by 5 o’clock.