In case you missed it, the moment came during a surreal 34-minute blackout in the second half that left the players milling around while the announcers tried to fill the void with “analysis.” That’s when the public broadcaster jumped in with this:

This might be a good time think about alternative programming. #SuperBowlBlackOut #WeHaveDowntonPBS—
  (@PBS) February 04, 2013

According to Marketing and Communications Director, Kevin Dando, the timing was fortuitous because PBS was already in the midst of a weekly discussion in which Downton lovers gather on social media to discuss the show. When Dando tweeted the invitation for SuperBowl viewers to come on over, he says his phone almost blew up.

“Within seconds, we saw hundreds, then thousands of retweets,” said Dando, including from celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis and from Time magazine’s TV critic:

I'm game! “@PBS: This might be a good time think about alternative programming. #SuperBowlBlackOut #WeHaveDowntonPBS”—
Giada De Laurentiis (@GDeLaurentiis) February 04, 2013

Carson wd have brought up candles by now MT @PBS: This might be a good time think about alternative programming. #WeHaveDowntonPBS—
James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) February 04, 2013

Dando says the SuperBowl invitation was one of PBS’s two most popular tweets in the last 12 months. The other came in October when the network rushed to defend itself after Mitt Romney questioned the value of Big Bird during the Presidential debates.

Last night, PBS was one a handful of brands, including Oreo and Audi, to “newsjack” the so-called #BlackoutBowl. These nimble moves on social media typically garner a flurry of free publicity but it’s unclear how much they change people’s intention to purchase or watch something.

“We’ll find out from the ratings if it helped,” said Dando.

Users of other services should watch the show while they can. Netflix only has Season 1, which a source familiar with the deal says it will lose on July 1, while Hulu Plus has Seasons 1 and 2.

A press release lays out the timing:

Beginning June 18, 2013, Prime Instant Video will be the exclusive subscription service for streaming the all-new Season 3 of Downton Abbey, and later this year, no digital subscription service other than Prime Instant Video will offer any seasons of Downton Abbey. Prime Instant Video will continue to be the exclusive subscription home through Season 4 and, if produced, Season 5 of Downton Abbey.

It’s easy to see why Amazon wants this deal. Downton Abbey is ”the most popular TV series with Prime Instant Video customers, ever,” the company said.

Fans should still be able to watch new episodes on PBS.org and will continue to be able to buy individual episodes and seasons from iTunes and Amazon.

Sure, Orson & Co. is publishing ebooks for iOS and they are enhanced with art, music and some videos. But “we are not trying to enhance anything,” Mason said. “I hate pop-out menus that beep and crows that screech. We are trying to take you deeper into the story.” The company uses the illuminated manuscripts of medieval times as its inspiration, so don’t call the final product an ebook: Rather, it’s an “eLume,” and it is classy.

So far, there is only one: Mason’s own History of a Pleasure Seeker, which Random House’s Knopf published in February of this year. It’s for sale as an app in the iTunes Store for $12.99 (there’s also a free excerpt). It includes detailed art (“look at that very sensual page curl,” Mason said), photographs (hidden discretely behind illustrations, which the reader can tap) and music. Users can hear Dan Stevens, the actor who plays Matthew Crawley on the BBC’s Downton Abbey, read the book to them. They can listen to music — including piano played by Mason himself and music sung by famed American tenor Alex Richardson. Or they can do none of those things, and simply read the text.

Random House still sells History of a Pleasure Seeker in both print and digital formats. But Mason retained the multimedia rights, which included a portion of the book’s text, and he licensed the rest of the text back in order to create the History of a Pleasure Seeker app.

Orson & Co. is now working on other books and is both commissioning original works and licensing books that have already been published. One original commission is The Oldest Bedtime Story Ever, a children’s edition of the Old Testament by theologian and artist Benjamin Morse (who is also working as the company’s creative director). Orson & Co. published the book in print this month and will release the eLume version soon. Mason is also working on a sequel to History of a Pleasure Seeker. Next up is Shanghai by Harriet Sergeant, a book that was previously published by British publisher John Murray in 1999. Mason told me that the company has also been approached by “major publishers to work in co-production with them,” but could not share details on other projects in the works.

Orson & Co. has an editorial staff of five so far. The company’s most recent hire is Maura Phelan as sales director; she previously held the same title at Random House. Mason said he is in discussions with “two players from very established companies” and will announce more hires in the new year. The company has raised “hundreds of thousands of dollars” from an angel investor Mason would not name.