ABC/Adam Taylor; O'Neill/White/INFphoto.com; Virginia Sherwood/Bravo You think the TV ratings' winners and losers were as evident as Kirstie Alley's tumble with Maksim Chmerkovskiy?
Think again:
• Dancing With the Stars: Last night's show was down from last Monday's: from 22.7 million viewers to an estimated 21.4 million. But the drop likely has less to do with Kirstie and Maks' fall, and more to do with competition from the men's college basketball championship game.
• The Kennedys: A disaster, right? Wrong. The controversial Katie Holmes- and Greg Kinnear-led miniseries got off to a great start, albeit a great start for ReelzChannel, with a network-record 1.9 million viewers for Sunday's first installment.
• Top Chef: The drama! The tension! Mike Isabella's pepperoni sauce! No, it's not surprising the Richard Blais-crowning finale was up from last year's (2.8 million versus 2.7 million). But it is surprising that for all the buzz Top Chef wasn't top chef, per se: Chopped All-Star's finale was (3.4 million) cable's most-watched cooking show.
• Donald Trump: His birther blathering has been bad good for business. Per NBC, Celebrity Apprentice is up more than 10 percent from its last edition. It also helps to have Gary Busey.
• Grey's Anatomy: The musical episode was way up from its previous non-musical episode (13.1 million versus 10.3 million). It was bigger than the Academy of Country Music Awards (13 million). And, guess what, it was bigger than any single Glee this season, save the Britney Spears and Super Bowl Sunday installments.
• Killer time slots: No shocker here: These never go out of style, as Dana Delany's DWTS-boosted Body of Proof premiere (8.5 million) and the American Idol-aided Mobbed opener (10.8 million) can attest.
• Teen Wolf: A trailer—a trailer!—for the upcoming MTV series scored more viewers than the hairy Teen Mom 2 finale that preceded it (5.2 million versus 4.6 million).
• Justin Bieber: Call it a win-lose scenario. The teen idol scored big at the Kids' Choice Awards; the show fell to its "smallest" audience in four years. (With 7.3 million viewers, it was still cable's most-watched show.)