Jon & Kate Madness, Plus TV's Biggest Winners, Losers

Karen Alquist/TLC

Which top show lost the most viewers during the just-completed TV season (and lived large anyway)? Which top show added the most fans (before its leading man possibly alienated them)?

And, just for fun, any idea how many times TLC exploited milked aired Jon & Kate Plus 8 last week?

The answers—and more questions—in this edition of the TV ratings quiz:

1. What was TV's biggest bleeder? House, which averaged 4.2 million fewer viewers this season compared to last, per the latest Nielsen stats (which don't factor in extended DVR playback). About the only other show to drop like that was Heroes, which was down 4 million. Unlike Heroes, House remained a Top 10 hit among young adults.

2. What were some other big losers? The late Pushing Daisies (down 3.4 million), Tuesday's American Idol (down 3 million), Desperate Housewives (down 2.9 million) and the retired Prison Break (down 2.6 million).

3. Did fans of those shows disappear, or are they just waiting to catch up on, say, House over the summer? Hard to say. But through May 10, the latest data available, House did add more viewers from a week's worth of DVR playback (2.1 million) than any show, save Grey's Anatomy (2.4 million). Other DVR all-stars included: CSI (1.9 million), Lost (1.8 million) and Fringe (1.78 million).

4. Which TV show fattened up the most, even before every last DVR view was counted? Not that Jason Mesnick is a terribly popular guy right now, but his famously indecisive edition of The Bachelor was up 3.6 million same-day viewers over the franchise's Spring 2008 run, the biggest gain of any Top 25 show.

5. What were some other big winners? NCIS (up 3 million), Criminal Minds (up 1.7 million) and Ghost Whisperer (up 1.6 million).

6. What was the difference between the William Petersen CSI and the Laurence Fishburne CSI? Last May, CSI lost its crown as TV's most-watched scripted show to Desperate Housewives. This month, it took it back (with, granted, the help of 10 Petersen episodes).

7. Why can Kiefer Sutherland be forgiven for having a big head? Because his 24 returned from its year-long hiatus to a postwaterboarding world and only fell 1.2 million viewers shy of its 2007 audience.

8. Why does it stink to be a CBS show? On Fox, Dollhouse averages 3.7 million viewers and gets renewed. On NBC, Friday Night Lights averages 4 million and gets renewed (with an assist from DirecTV). On ABC, Scrubs averages 4.5 million and gets renewed. On CBS, Without a Trace averages 12.05 million, finishes in 18th place, but slips by 750,000 viewers from last season, the only such drop for a Top 20 CBS crime show—and gets canned. Befitting its strict standards, CBS ended the season as the most-watched network, and the only one of the Big Four to get bigger. Thanks to Idol, Fox reigned as the No. 1 network in the 18-49 demo.

9. What was the most unsurprising finding of the season? Morley Safer fans either don't have DVRs or can't convince their respective activity directors to program them. 60 Minutes, which otherwise had a big year, thanks to football and Barack Obama, was adding, on average, only 151,000 viewers once a week's worth of playback was added in.

10. What did the Top 10 look like? A lot like last year's, albeit with a few tweaks: House dropped out; 60 Minutes moved up; Dancing With the Stars' fall and spring editions counted as one and Tuesday's and Wednesday's Idol flip-flopped positions. The rundown of 2008-09's most-watched shows: Wednesday Idol (25.5 million), Tuesday Idol (24.7 million), Monday's DWTS (19.8 million), CSI (17.4 million), Sunday Night Football (16.84 million—lowly NBC's lone Top 20 show), NCIS (16.8 million), Tuesday's DWTS (16.3 million), The Mentalist (16.29 million—TV's top freshman show), Desperate Housewives (14.4 million) and 60 Minutes (14.1 million).

11. Hey, what about Jon & Kate? Was it my imagination, or did TLC run that show a million times over the weekend? It was not your imagination, but for the record, the cable network merely aired the series 97 times last week. All the broadcasts were reruns; all were about building momentum for Monday's mega-watched premiere.