Brett Favre again moved the ratings meter both in the Twin Cities and throughout the country.

Facing his former team on Monday night, the Vikings quarterback played a key role in the game registering a combined 58.3 rating in the Twin Cities on KSTP (Ch. 5) and ESPN. That is a staggering number in a day and age where viewers have so many choices and it easily outdistances the 43.3 rating that this market had for last season's Super Bowl between Arizona and Pittsburgh.

To put the 58.3 rating into context, it means 1.009 million households in this market were tuned into the game. There are slightly more than 1.7 million households in the entire designated market area for the Twin Cities.

KSTP, which carried a simulcast of ESPN's telecast, had a 40.8 rating for the Vikings' 30-23 victory and ESPN had a 17.5 rating in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market. In Milwaukee, the game did a combined 49.7 rating with the over-the-air carrier in that market firing a 36.0 rating.

The overnight rating for Monday's game on ESPN was a 14.2, which according to network research is the highest-overnight rating for any show on ESPN dating to 1997 when records were first kept.

It was expected that Monday's game also might set a viewership record for cable television. ESPN currently holds that mark, having drawn 18.6 million viewers for its telecast of the Dallas-Philadelphia game on a Monday night on Sept. 15, 2008. Total viewership figures should be available later today.

ESPN officials certainly won't be surprised by these numbers, knowing that Favre already is ratings gold and that the fact he was facing his former team of 16 years was certain to draw plenty of casual viewers.

"Brett Favre's one of those rare athletes that moves the meter," said Jay Rothman, senior coordinating producer at ESPN. "Evidenced by the games we've done with him in the past, evidenced by the ridiculous rating we got for a preseason game where he only played a half against Houston [in August]. He's a legend. He's a folk hero."

If you didn't get enough of the game on Monday, the NFL Network will replay a 90-minute encore at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday.