NEW YORK (February 8, 2010)— The Nielsen Co. estimates that 106.5 million people watched The Super Bowl Sunday night, which breaks a record set in 1983 when 105.97 million viewers tuned in for the finale of "M-A-S-H," at a time when there were fewer sets.

Compelling story lines involving the city of New Orleans and its recovery from Hurricane Katrina and Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning’s quest for a second Super Bowl ring drove the viewership.

The game also obliterated the previous record viewership for a Super Bowl, last year's game between Arizona and Pittsburgh, which 98.7 million people watched.

Sunday night’s game also set a record for the amount of advertising.

Commercials took up nearly 48 minutes of the game, the most for any Super Bowl.

The research firm Kantar Media said the total run time for the ads that aired on CBS was nearly 3 minutes longer than last year's total, which was also a record.

The game included an unusual number of shorter, 15-second ads as marketers looked to keep their costs lower while remaining in the advertising mix.

Commercials typically come in 30-second blocks, which sold this year for between $2.5 million and more than $3 million, but Kantar said seven of this year's 66 ads were just 15 seconds long, which is the most since 2002.