Britney Spears gawking lives.
Spears' guest appearance on Monday's How I Met Your Mother helped boost the sitcom by 1 million viewers, Nielsen Media Research stats show.
The CBS show averaged a season-high 10.7 million viewers, up from last week's 9.7 million.
It was the most-watched prime-time Spears moment of the Spears family's especially tumultuous last six months. It topped Britney Spears' sleepwalking routine at the MTV Video Music Awards (7.1 million). And it topped the first new Zoey 101 (7.3 million) to air in the wake of teenager Jamie Lynn Spears' announcement that she was pregnant.
How I Met Your Mother was Britney Spears' first gig since the MTV debacle gave way to months of personal, but not terribly private, drama. On it, she plays a sensitive secretary at a dermatologist's office visited by Josh Radnor's Ted. She appears about, rough estimate, 1,000 percent more engaged than she did at the Video Music Awards.
Spears curiosity factor or no, How I Met Your Mother remained an also-ran on Monday.
ABC's Dancing with the Stars dominated, averaging an estimated 20.3 million ballroom enthusiasts 8-10 p.m., and drawing twice as many viewers in the 8:30-9 p.m. time slot as How I Met Your Mother.
Elsewhere, absence made hearts grow fonder for CSI: Miami, sidelined since January. The series averaged 16.1 million for its first poststrike episode, up some 20 percent from its season-to-date average. The crime drama killed NBC's Medium (estimated 8.8 million) and ABC's The Bachelor (estimated 8 million).
Monday night's numbers, per usual, will show up in next week's Nielsen rankings.
Here are the ratings highlights from the TV week ended Sunday:
- American Idol is so powerful that it's only off 5 percent (about 2 million viewers) on Tuesday nights this season compared to last.
- It's Wednesdays that are making Idol look somewhat mortal. On that night, the show is down the now-standard 10 percent (or about 4 million viewers).
- CBS' Two and a Half Men (fifth place, 14.1 million), down 12 percent from last season, natch, was the top-rated show sans the titular words Idol and Dancing.
- ABC's Lost (ninth place, 11.46 million) won its time slot, but lost more ground. Compared to last season, the drama is down 23 percent.
- The men's college basketball tournament is adhering to network tradition. Per the Hollywood Reporter, which crunched the numbers, the games so far are down 9 percent for CBS.
- In a change of pace, NBC's Lipstick Jungle (43rd place, 6.9 million) perked up—a lot—for its season finale, adding more than 1.5 million viewers from the previous week.
- Something got into ABC's Eli Stone (40th place, 7.3 million), too.
- Medium (10.1 million—a season high, 16th place) liked it better when CSI: Miami was still in reruns.
- ABC's Miss Guided (22nd place, 9.3 million) liked it better when it aired after Tuesday's Dancing with the Stars (fourth place, 17 million), rather than when it aired later in the week (51st place, 6.3 million) after, um, Thursday's Miss Guided (53rd place, 6.3 million).
- Moses, as seen in ABC's annual offering of The Ten Commandments (37th place, 7.5 million), schooled the likes of Nickelodeon's iCarly (3.7 million) on Saturday night.
- CBS' Jericho (5.73 million) placed 60th, and got canceled, which should make anxious times for the scripted shows that finished 59th and 61st, respectively—ABC's Men in Trees (5.9 million) and Fox's Canterbury's Law (5.7 million).
- Working women are nothing if not persuasive. From the first hour to the second hour of 20/20's two-part, very special special on prostitution, the ABC newsmag added more than 1 million viewers (52nd place, 6.3 million for the first hour; 39th place, 7.4 million for the second).
- It took three years, but Sahara's finally a hit. A Sunday night TBS outing for the 2005 Matthew McConaughey movie (4 million) was cable's biggest nonwrestling prime-time broadcast behind a Friday night Disney Channel broadcast of Ella Enchanted (4.1 million).
- Shunned by ABC, George Lopez is killing on Nick at Nite, with five broadcasts averaging at least 3 million viewers.
Overall, Idol was plenty big enough for Fox to win the network races in total viewers (averaging 10.l million) and 18- to 49-year-olds (averaging 4.8 million).
Dancing with the Stars was big enough to make ABC competitive again (9.2 million). CBS' returning Monday-night comedies were big enough to make the network youngish again—it finished second in the 18-49 demo, and averaged 8.8 million overall viewers.
As for fourth-place NBC (7.1 million), Medium was its hippest show.
In cable, USA was the top prime-time network (2.8 million), followed by Disney (2.5 million) and Nick at Nite (2.2 million).
Here's a look at the 10 most-watched broadcast network prime-time shows for the week ended Sunday, according to Nielsen Media Research:
1. American Idol (Tuesday), Fox, 27.3 million viewers
2. American Idol (Wednesday), Fox, 26.1 million viewers
3. Dancing with the Stars (Monday), ABC, 21.1 million viewers
4. Dancing with the Stars (Tuesday), ABC, 17 million viewers
5. Two and a Half Men, CBS, 14.1 million viewers
6. Survivor: Micronesia, CBS, 11.6 million viewers
7. 60 Minutes, CBS, 11.5 million viewers
8. The New Adventures of Old Christine, 11.47 million viewers
9. Lost, ABC, 11.46 million viewers
10. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, ABC, 11.4 million viewers
(Updated March 25, 2008, at 3:32 p.m. PT)