Animal Planet has offered a wonderful alternative to the Super bowl for quite some time now. Often times the adorable antics of puppies are preferredover the not so fluffy football players. Once again, Animal Planet delivered the goods this year with Puppy Bowl IX! According to the official stats released by Discovery, a record 12.4 million viewers tuned in to the segment.
The first airing of the Puppy Bowl was at 3:00 p.m. EST, but when the lights went out for 34 minutes in the 3rdquarter ratings soared to 1.1 million viewers. A 54 percent increase from the originalairing of the segment.
The best part of the Puppy Bowl is that there are no losers. The Bowl featured adorable pups, peppy hedgehog cheerleaders and official sideline reporterMeep the bird. All of the animals from the show came from Petfinder.com,rescue groups, and shelters from all over the United States. Since the show, every animal has been adopted. Meep(@MeeptheBird) did great too, gaining close to 19,000 Twitter followers.