The Top 20 Most-Watched Events in Television History

Over 50% of American households were watching The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. That’s pretty typical, but on that particular night, the show had some very special guests — The Beatles. Suddenly, those 73 million people were exposed to what would soon become the Beatlemania phenomenon in the U.S. That episode of The Ed Sullivan Show was the most watched in the show’s history and still holds that record today.