Red Nose Day 2015 - 13th March

Of course, another difference is that BBC One in 1988 was one of four channels available to UK viewers, so Red Nose Day got huge ratings -- and to some extent, that is still true today. Meanwhile, most Americans have a choice of hundreds of channels on their cable / satellite systems, which means that the American TV landscape is highly fragmented, and that UK-sized ratings are almost unheard-of for entertainment programming.

At the end of the day charity wins. Geez.

How fragmented is US TV, do the affiliate stations of NBC, CBS, and ABC still dominate viewing in a similar manner to the BBC, ITV and C4 here ?

Definitely more fragmented than in the past and increasingly so.
http://nypost.com/2013/04/30/tv-in-a-bad-spot-fragmented-audience-is-threatening-ad-sales/

Let's put it this way: The most-watched single program in the U.S. for the week ending on May 11 was seen by 14,939,000 people (out of a population of 320 million in the U.S.)

Meanwhile, the most-watched single program in the UK for the same week was seen by 9,070,000 people (out of a population of 64 million in the UK).

As you can see, the U.S. TV landscape is far more fragmented.

(Ratings from Nielsen and BARB.)

Was providing a like-for-like comparison, and countering the thought that Red Nose day does well just because it has been on for decades. Yes - it does VERY well now it's been on-air for decades, but the first show did well too.

Any appeal which raises the amount the US appeal did is worth congratulating. It just goes to show how the US and UK TV landscapes differ, that a show like Red Nose Day/Comic Relief can rate well here AND raise tens of millions of pounds. It also, as others have mentioned, shows how less fragmented the UK TV audience is, even though we have a relatively strong multichannel landscape.