Rams Reporter: LA Didn't Care About Super Bowl Loss

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NEW YORK (CBS SPORTS/AP) - The Los Angeles Rams had a great season. They won the NFC West, won the NFC, and had a chance to tie the Super Bowl in the final minutes of regulation before ultimately losing, 13-3. Any other fan base would have been heartbroken Sunday night.

Los Angeles fans, however, were not. 

According to NBC LA's Rams and Lakers reporter Michael Duarte, it didn’t take the city long to move on.

“Did they ever even have to move on?” Duarte said on After Hours with Amy Lawrence. “I ran a poll in the middle of the week on NBC LA asking, ‘What do you want to see by the end of Sunday: Did you want to see the Rams win and (have) a parade down Figueroa this week? Did you want to see the Lakers acquire Anthony Davis? Or did you want to see the Dodgers sign Bryce Harper?”

You probably know where this is going.

.@michaeljduarte was asked how long it took the city of Los Angeles to move on from the #Rams' Super Bowl loss.His response: "Did they ever even have to?"https://t.co/5MaMRYtf9b

— CBS Sports Radio (@CBSSportsRadio) February 5, 2019

“Overwhelmingly, the answer was – over winning a championship for our city, especially over Boston, which is a sour point for us – they chose acquiring Anthony Davis,” Duarte said. “That tells you the pulse of Lakers fans and the Lakers being the top billing, especially with LeBron in our city. They always pretty much have been, especially with the Rams only being in the city for three years as an NFL franchise.”

The Los Angeles area actually had a lower TV rating than the country as a whole (44.6 over night rating in LA, compared to 44.9 for entire U.S.). But it was still a well-watched game for LA compared to past years, with the highest rating for a Super Bowl since 1996.

After the Super Bowl, Duarte was ready to go on air and discuss what transpired in Atlanta. 

He never got the chance.

“Our news director was like, ‘You know what? I think our fans have already moved on. We’ll stick to this Lakers-Anthony Davis rumor,’” Duarte said. “As soon as the Rams lost, for us, it was, ‘OK, that’s over with. Let’s move on to Dodgers offseason moves and to Lakers trade rumors.’ That’s where we’re at now, and that’s where we were at throughout the week. Now that the Super Bowl is over and the Rams lost, that’s where everybody here in L.A.’s eyes turned to.”

Overall this year's Super Bowl was seen by 100.7 million people on television and streaming services, the smallest audience for football's annual spectacle in a decade.

Since reaching a peak of 114.4 million viewers for the Patriots' 2015 victory over the Seattle Seahawks, the Super Bowl audience has slipped each year since. The Super Bowl is traditionally the most-watched television event of the year in the U.S., and its audience hadn't dipped below 100 million since the Pittsburgh Steelers-Arizona Cardinals game in 2009.