The Jennifer Lopez Effect

The star-struck American Idol finalists weren't the only ones happy to see Jennifer Lopez.

Lopez's turn as an Idol vocal coach shows helped the Fox show slow its relative ratings slide, the latest Nielsen Media Research stats show.

Sure, Tuesday's Idol (second place, 26.8 million viewers), featuring the actress-singer coaching Sanjaya Malakar to a "wasn't-terrible" performance, per the ears of judge Simon Cowell, was 2 million viewers lighter than last year's Top 8 performance show (28.8 million).

But the results show (first place, 28.6 million), featuring Lopez taking the Idol stage and promoting her new Spanish-language album, Como Ama Una Mujer, was way up from the like show from last season (26.2 million).

The Wednesday performance marked the first time in six weeks that an Idol improved on last year's outsized numbers. In that time, Idol has not wanted for big names, Peter Noone/Lulu week excluded. Gwen Stefani, Tony Bennett and Diana Ross all stopped by to counsel the finalists. But only Lopez arrived with an entourage of viewers worthy of a diva.

In her exit interview with reporters last week, ninth-place finisher Haley Scarnato called working with Lopez "amazing."

"She was great. She was very warm and comforting," Scarnato said, "and she had a lot to tell us, and you could tell she really wanted to help us."

And all that in 10 minutes—the amount of time Scarnato estimated each Idol singer spent one-on-one with the Out of Sight star.

It remains to be seen if Idol will return the favor, and boost Lopez's album sales.

Como Ama Una Mujer, a hit on the Spanish-language charts, hasn't done much on the overall album charts, selling fewer than 50,000 copies in its debut week, and falling out of the Top 10 in its second week.

If all else fails, Lopez can always return to Sanjaya outreach.

Here are some other ratings highlights from the TV week ended Sunday:

• In case you were wondering, Lopez did not appear on the CW's telecast of the Brick Awards (132nd place, 1.1 million), honoring young do-gooders and appealing to fewer viewers than an hour's worth of Full House reruns on cable's Nick at Nite (2 million).
• Would 17.3 million people really tune in ABC's Dancing with the Stars (sixth place) to see Leeza Gibbons shunned for her paso doble? Yup. Even more--18.8 million (fifth place)--would actually tune in to see the TV host do the paso doble.   
• CBS' Shark (ninth place, 14.5 million) is, yes, hot, cracking the Top 10 for the third straight week. Apparently the 10 p.m. lights-out rule at Shady Acres has been lifted.
• ABC's Desperate Housewives (seventh place, 16.4 million) is looking a tad less desperate.
• Hey, a hit new comedy! Unfortunately, for the sitcom genre, CBS' King of Queens (14th place, 13.4 million) isn't really new--it just turned 200 episodes old. And it's bound for retirement in May.
• The premiere numbers for the new ABC comedy Notes from the Underbelly (36th place, 8.3 million) and the new NBC improv show Thank God You're Here (39th place, 8.2 million) were, in latter-day Sanjaya fashion, not terrible.
• Terrible doesn't begin to describe what happened to NBC's already axed Andy Barker P.I. (114th place, 2.1 million for the first episode; 118th place, 2 million for the second episode) on Saturday night. Cruel and unusual punishment is more like it.
• NBC has ordered more six more scripts of Friday Night Lights (62nd place, 6.3 million for its first-season finale), E! Online TV columnist Kristin Veitch reported Monday. The football drama averaged 6 million viewers overall, better than 30 Rock (5.7 million), which has been officially reupped, and worse than Kidnapped (6.7 million), which was dropped off a pier last October.   
• CBS' The New Adventures of Old Christine (44th place, 7.7 million) was wondering if Jennifer Lopez was available--stat.
• In cable, it was all about Nick's Spongebob Squarepants, with a Friday night episode topping all 10,000-plus comers (5.9 million).
• Other cable winners: The third-season premiere of TLC's Little People, Big World (3.29 million); the new Lifetime true-crime movie The Staircase Murders (3.3 million); and, a Saturday-night outing on USA for the 2004 Nicolas Cage flick, National Treasure (4.4 million).

The network race shaped up in usual fashion: CBS won the week in total viewers (11.3 million); Fox won the week in 18-to-49-year-old viewers.

Thanks to Dancing with the Stars, ABC edged CBS for second place among young adults. Thanks to its usual black hole (i.e., Saturday night), it finished third in viewers (9.3 million) behind Fox (10.3 million).

NBC, with no shows in the Top 20, and only one show in the Top 25 (Monday's Dancing-diminished Deal or No Deal—23rd place, 11 million), finished fourth in both races, averaging 6.8 million viewers.

Here's a look at the 10 most-watched prime-time shows for the week ended Sunday, according to Nielsen Media Research:

1. American Idol (Wednesday), Fox, 28.6 million viewers
2. American Idol (Tuesday), Fox, 26.8 million viewers
3. CSI, CBS, 22.2 million viewers
4. House, Fox, 21.6 million viewers
5. Dancing with the Stars (Monday), ABC, 18.8 million viewers
6. Dancing with the Stars (Tuesday), ABC, 17.3 million viewers
7. Desperate Housewives, ABC, 16.4 million viewers
8. CSI: Miami, CBS, 16.1 million viewers
9. Shark, CBS, 14.5 million viewers
10. NCIS, CBS, 14.4 million viewers