Yahoo! News Makes M*A*S*H Mistake

Yahoo! News has a feature called Who Knew? in which a short video is presented and then a brief quiz offered. Today’s entry is titled Series Finales: “House” And “Desperate Housewives” Ending This Month, Can They Compare To Classic Finales?. The video mentions the series finale of M*A*S*H (“Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen,” originally broadcast February 28th, 1983) about eight seconds in. Here’s the video followed by a partial transcript:

The gold standard for series finales is still the final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983. 106 million viewers watched the poignant goodbye to Hawkeye, a record that still stands. The final episode of The Fugitive in 1967 owns the record for the largest share of the audience, though. 72% of American households tuned in to see if Doctor Richard Kimble caught the one-armed man.

Notice anything wrong with that statement? Perhaps not. I doubt most M*A*S*H fans know without looking it up but “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” averaged a 77% Nielsen share, giving it the record for the largest share of the audience for a series finale, not The Fugitive as the video asserts. It was correctly identified as drawing the most viewers, however. Fun fact: that 77% share was not a record back in 1983. Read more at my Goodbye, Farewell and Amen Ratings Analysis.