Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl XVI adopted 1.852 million viewers on Sunday, which is about the same as it got last year. (OK, so technically it was down all of 2,000 total viewers.)
Among adults 25-54, Puppy Bowl’s XVI’s 0.97 rating was up 8% from XV’s 0.90.
The 2019 Puppy Bowl drew 1.854 million total viewers from 3 p.m. to 5:03 p.m. That one was way down — minus 39% — from the prior year’s 3.05 million tally, so Animal Planet is plenty happy to have stopped the drooling — er, bleeding.
Excluding news programming, Puppy Bowl XVI was the No. 1 telecast on cable among women. If we scratch sports from the equation too, which is admittedly kind of weird to do with football-adjacent programming like Puppy Bowl, the cuddly contest was No. 1 by that angle as well.
Meet the 2020 (it’s actually filmed in fall 2019) adorable starting lineup here. Team Fluff, captained by Theodore, took home the Lombarky Trophy, beating Team Ruff 63-59.
Gina, a 12-week-old Labrador retriever-chow chow mix, was named MVP (Most Valuable Puppy).
For those wondering, yes, Gina and Theodore are both as ridiculously cute as you think.
Here’s Gina:
And Theodore (do NOT call him Teddy):
Animal Planet and Hallmark Channel fight like cats and dogs every Super Bowl Sunday. Hallmark’s Kitten Bowl averaged a 0.28 demo rating this year, which was down 10% from 2019’s 0.31.