Which Shows Are Up? And (Uh-Oh) Which Are Down?

Taking the ratings pulses of Chuck, Gossip Girl, Fringe—and more

Which shows are heading into winter vacation with some heat—and which ones aren't?

Let's find out:

Looking Up

1. Gossip Girl: Hit a season high last night, with 2.1 million viewers, prelim numbers show.  Ditto for its CW companion, 90210 (2.1 million estimated).

2. Fringe: No, not all the news about this one is grim. Thursday's outing (5.1 million) was up 6 percent from the previous new episode. Now about keeping that momentum going on Friday nights…

3. Chuck: The best part about airing opposite Dancing With the Stars? Once you don't air opposite DWTS, you look like a superstar. Example: The week of DWTS' fall finale, Chuck scraped by with 4.8 million viewers; last week, with DWTS in hibernation, Chuck blew up (for Chuck) with 6.2 million viewers. Ditto for its on-thin-ice NBC companions, The Event (5.8 million last week) and Chase (6 million).

4. Glee: Yeah, it got beat by a cartoon, but "Special Education" was still bigger than "Furt": 11.7 million versus 10.4 million.

5. The Walking Dead: This show is going nowhere but up. A week after hitting a new high, Sunday's season-one finale hit another new high: 6 million, tops among all cable series.

Falling Down

6. Skating With the Stars: The anti-Walking Dead, this show is going nowhere but down: Last night, it got killed by the return of The Sing Off, and bottomed out with an estimated 4.8 million viewers.

7. Terriers: Yes, Wednesday's season finale was up from the previous week—784,000 viewers versus 614,000—but the bottom line was Monday's pink slip.

8. Sarah Palin's Alaska: Before Bristol Palin fires off a tweet, we know, we know: Her mom's show still rates a bigger audience than the vast majority of the shows in the vast cable universe. But Sunday's show (2.8 million) was down nearly 1 million from last week's (3.5 million), which itself was down more than 1 million from premiere week (5 million).

9. Grey's Anatomy: There was no major slippage (from 11.5 million for its previous new episode to 11 million for Thursday's), and the show was a top performer among the demographically desirable, but there were no fireworks, either.

10. People (read: men) who are waiting for the remote back: ABC Family's "25 Days of Christmas" programming, which averaged a franchise-best 3.1 million viewers last week, has only begun. Deal with it.

Here were the week's 10 most-watched (non-football) shows among 18- to 49-year-olds, per the just-released Nielsen Media Research broadcast rankings: 

1. Glee (6 million demo viewers; 11.7 million overall viewers)
2. The Simpsons (5.5 million demo viewers; 9.5 million overall viewers)
3. Grey's Anatomy (5.2 million demo viewers; 11 million overall viewers)
4. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (5.16 million demo viewers; 12.2 million overall viewers)
5. The Office (4.9 million demo viewers; 7.3 million overall viewers)
6. Survivor: Nicaragua (4.8 million demo viewers; 12.3 million overall viewers)
7. Desperate Housewives (4.7 million demo viewers; 11.4 million overall viewers)
8. Victoria's Secret Fashion Show (4.4 million demo viewers; 9 million overall viewers)
9. The Cleveland Show (4.2 million demo viewers; 7 million overall viewers)
10. The Amazing Race (4.1 million demo viewers; 10.3 million overall viewers)