Tuning in Jamie Lynn

Zoey 101 is pregnant with viewers.

Jamie Lynn Spears' Nickelodeon sitcom birthed its most watched episode ever last week, with the hourlong season closer averaging 7.3 million attendants, the latest Nielsen Media Research stats show.

Only the NBC game show 1 vs. 100 (8.4 million) scored more viewers in all of TV, broadcast or cable, on Friday.

A repeat of the Zoey 101 cliffhanger on Saturday night averaged another 3.9 million.

The season finale, in which Spears' titular boarding-school teen shipped off to London, was the first new episode to air since the 16-year-old younger sister of Britney Spears announced last month she was pregnant.

While the with-child Spears recently shipped off to her home in Louisiana, her kid-magnet show will remain on Nick. Despite rumors to the contrary, the cable network said last week it will, as planned, launch the already filmed fourth season of Zoey 101 in February.

The prepregnancy Zoey 101 was a hit performer for Nick, drawing a then-record 3 million viewers for its third-season premiere. As of November, the network said, it was TV's top-rated show among children aged 9-14.

The postpregnancy Zoey 101, however, was a phenomenon, not only outdrawing every other comedy and drama series on cable, but outdoing Britney Spears' last prime-time vehicle, the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, which averaged 7.1 million gawkers for the pop star's comeback "performance."

Among other things, the Zoey 101 season finale was bigger than two college football bowl games on ESPN, the postseason cast reunion on VH1's I Love New York (4.6 million) and the week's biggest Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel (3.9 million).

Oh, and a Thursday afternoon screening of She's Having a Baby (538,000) on Lifetime.

Here, meanwhile, are other ratings highlights from the TV week:

• Viewers aren't doing striking writers any favors, turning out en masse for NBC's new unscripted shows American Gladiators (14th place, 12.1 million) and The Celebrity Apprentice (19th place, 11.1 million).
• More not-good news for scribes: Celebrity Apprentice averaged 44 percent more viewers on Thursday than the Office-Scrubs comedy hour.
• Even more not-good news for scribes: In Chuck's old time slot on Monday, American Gladiators averaged an estimated 10.9 million viewers, or 2.2 million more than the comedy-spy series.
• And the hits just keep on coming...A brand-new (scripted) Cold Case (20th place, 11 million) on CBS lost 1 million viewers from its unscripted Amazing Race lead-in (15th place, 12 million).  
• A new (scripted) episode of ABC's Desperate Housewives (fifth place, 19.8 million) was treated like the rare find it was; the debut of ABC's new (and scripted) Cashmere Mafia (21st place, 10.6 million) was jettisoned by nearly half the Housewives audience.
• Good (and more bad) news for scribes: The CBS game show Power of Ten (49th place, 6.5 million) tanked in its prime-time return, sunk by the (unscripted) NBC game show Deal or No Deal (12th place, 12.3 million) and the (unscripted) ABC reality show Wife Swap (30th place, 8.4 million). 
• Sort of good news for scribes: Viewers seem very tired of Grey's Anatomy (54th place, 6.1 million) and Ugly Betty reruns (65th place, 5.1 million).
• On the other hand, they're pretty okay with previously viewed CSIs (ninth place, 13.3 million) and pretty apathetic about all-new episodes of Women's Murder Club (37th place, 7.8 million) and Las Vegas (42nd place, 7.1 million).   
• Perhaps Fred Thompson should have kept his prime-time job. The 18th season premiere of NBC's Law & Order (seventh place, 13.5 million) won Wednesday night, while the Saturday night Republican presidential debate on ABC (40th place, 7.4 million) got its teeth kicked in by the Democratic one (26th place, 9.4 million).
• Roger Clemens was a performance-enhancing interview subject for CBS' 60 Minutes (sixth place, 18.2 million), which posted its best numbers in two months.

Overall, NBC fattened up with NFL playoff action and reality shows, scoring wins as the most watched network (averaging 11.7 million) and the highest-rated one among young adults.

Rerun-heavy CBS (8.8 million) was way down from last year, as was college-football-heavy Fox (8.7 million). ABC (8.4 million), flush with an all-new Sunday lineup, was up. The CW (1.9 million) was the CW, down nearly 40 percent from the first week of 2007.

In cable, usual prime-time kingpin ESPN missed Monday Night Football, and fell to sixth place (1.8 million). USA (2.7 million), Disney Channel (2.4 million) and TNT (2.2 million) rushed right on by.

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. NFC Wildcard Game (Saturday) (Jacksonville vs. Pittsburgh), NBC, 25.7 million viewers
2. NFL Playoff Pre-Kick (Saturday), NBC, 23.9 million viewers
3. NFL Playoff Bridge (Saturday), NBC, 23.5 million viewers
4. AFC Wildcard Postgame (Sunday), CBS, 21.4 million viewers
5. Desperate Housewives, ABC, 19.8 million viewers
6. 60 Minutes, CBS, 18.2 million viewers
7. Law & Order, NBC, 13.5 million viewers
8. Deal or No Deal (Thursday), NBC, 13.4 million viewers
9. CSI, CBS, 13.3 million viewers
10. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, ABC, 12.6 million viewers