Adam Taylor/FOXWith According to Jim and without Dancing With the Stars, ABC got killed in Tuesday night's ratings race.
Fox and CBS stepped in and cleaned up with a solid House (12.4 million viewers) and a record-sized episode of The Mentalist (18.8 million), respectively, Nielsen estimates said.
House was the night's biggest show among adults 18-49. The Mentalist scored the biggest audience and, for the first time, CBS said, outdrew its lead-in, NCIS (18.5 million).
Fox's Fringe (8.7 million) held steady but got beat in the demo by the surging Mentalist.
On ABC, Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town did OK (9 million) but was down about 2 million viewers from last week's A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. It would take too many fingers to count how many viewers the season-premiering According to Jim (5.8 million, for back-to-back episodes) and the late Eli Stone (4.9 million) were down from last week's DWTS finale.
The CW opted for repeats over dead air. Not that you could tell the difference from the numbers posted by 90210 (1.2 million) and especially Privileged (855,000).