Monty Brinton/CBSHere are other ratings highlights from the TV week ended Sunday:
- With Idol Gives Back taking over Wednesday, the Idol results show was pushed back to Thursday, which was actually bad news for Idol. CBS' CSI (third place, 20.09 million) came within about 40,000 viewers of topping the untoppable Fox show (second place, 20.1 million).
- ABC's Desperate Housewives (eighth place, 16.4 million) was back. Nearly 3 million of its usual fans weren't.
- Absence didn't make hearts grow fonder for NBC's ER (36th place, 7.5 million), which returned from the writers' strike about 2 million patients lighter.
- The same went for NBC's 30 Rock (55th place, 5.8 million), which was down nearly 1 million viewers from its season average.
- Something people wanted to see, and apparently badly: The first new episode of The Office in five months. The NBC comedy (25th place, 9.3 million) was up 1.5 million viewers.
- The return of NBC's Scrubs (45th place, 6.6 million) wasn't a big deal in the overall rankings. But in the race for 18- to 49-year-old year-old viewers, the potentially ABC-bound comedy placed 17th.
- Actually, all of NBC's Thursday night shows, even the aged ER, were top 25 hits in the young-adult demo—except for 30 Rock.
- With CBS' comedies preempted due to college basketball, ABC's returning Samantha Who? (19th place, 10.4 million) represented in the top 20 for the enfeebled genre.
- Miss USA is doing about as well as the U.S. dollar. Viewership for the NBC pageant (58th place, 5.7 million) was down 23 percent from last year.
- Impressively, CBS' Secret Talents of the Stars (78th place, 4.6 million) didn't lose a single viewer from its season premiere to its season finale.
- In cable, a prime-time SpongeBob SquarePants on Nick (6.1 million) ruled all.
- Lifetime had a good week. First, it got Project Runway. Then, it aired the top-rated TV movie, The Memory Keeper's Daughter (5.8 million). To top it off, The Golden Girls killed in late night (822,000 for a 1 a.m., Tuesday episode).
- Other cable standouts: The season finale of VH1's Rock of Love 2 (5 million); Spike TV's original Star Wars trilogy marathon, led by a Sunday night airing of Return of the Jedi (4.1 million); and, the continuing drama of MTV's The Hills (3.6 million).
- Bravo may not have Project Runway after this summer—season five premieres in July, the network announced Monday—but it'll always have Coyote Ugly (643,000 for its latest Friday night outing).
- In late night, the Tonight Show's slump—it's still No. 1, but down more than 1 million viewers from last season—is Late Night's burden. For the first time ever, the NBC Conan O'Brien show was bested by CBS' Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: 1.8 million viewers compared to 1.9 million viewers, for the week ended April 4.
In the network races, Fox just edged out CBS in total viewers, averaging 10.27 million to the latter's 10.25 million. It scored a bigger victory in the 18-to-49 department, also over CBS.
In cable, USA was the top prime-time network (2.6 million), followed by Disney Channel (2.3 million) and Star Wars-assisted Spike (2.2 million.)