The O.C. Lays a Lemon

Last spring on The O.C., Marissa Cooper died in a fiery car crash. A lucky break, as it turned out.

The fourth-season premiere of the once hot Fox soap was a stone-cold disaster, drawing only 3.4 million Marissa Cooper mourners and others, bad for 98th place in the latest Nielsen Media Research rankings.

Other series heading into or starting November sweeps spectacularly short on viewers included: Fox's Happy Hour (102nd place, 3.2 million); Fox's Vanished (100th place, 3.3 million); NBC's Twenty Good Years (92nd place, 4.1 million); Fox's 'Til Death (89th place, 4.3 million); and NBC's 30 Rock (85th place, 4.6 million).

Paying with their TV lives for their poor performances, Happy Hour and Twenty Good Years have both been yanked, effectively immediately.

Fox will fill Happy Hour's Thursday slot with an additional dose of the clinging-to-life 'Til Death. NBC, which was going to bump Twenty Good Years from Wednesdays by the end of the month anyway, gets the dirty work over with now, calling on The Biggest Loser to pad the night. (As previously announced, 30 Rock, which was paired on Wednesdays with Twenty Good Years, will air on Thursdays as of next week.)

Twenty Good Years reportedly remains in production; Happy Hour can't even be found on Fox's Website anymore.

Also erased from Fox: the game show The Rich List, which debuted before 4.1 million (90th place) last week en route to being canceled this week. The one-and-done program's 9 p.m. Wednesday home will be filled this week by The O.C., which will air at its usual 9 p.m. Thursday time, too.

If Fox is sticking by The O.C., at least for now, perhaps it's because the network has developed a bad case of the guilts. Last May, knowing full well that 9 p.m., Thursday, would be occupied not only by CBS' CSI but also by ABC's Grey's Anatomy, Fox decided the Cohen clan and friends should move to the tough neighborhood, too.

"We feel the audience will be there," Fox Entertainment president Peter Liguori said at the time.

So much for feelings. The show's fourth-season opener was down 54 percent from its third-season opener, down 60 percent from its second-season opener, and, in the cruelest stat, down 20 percent from the failed reality series (Celebrity Duets) that bombed in the 9 p.m. Thursday slot earlier this fall.

There is some good news for The O.C.

Cancellation or no, its suffering is not destined to last for long. That's because last summer, Fox only ordered 16 new episodes instead of the usual 22. After this week, The O.C.'s season will already be almost one-fifth done.

And then maybe the rest of the characters can go join Marissa Cooper in peace.

Other ratings highlights for the TV week ended Sunday:

• Why there's not much room for The O.C. on Thursdays: Grey's Anatomy (third place, 21 million) and CSI (fourth place, 20.8 million) combined to occupy nearly 42 million sets of eyeballs.
• Sunday proved a pretty crowded place, too, what with ABC's Desperate Housewives (first place, 22.6 million) and NBC's Sunday Night Football (second place, 21.9 million) rounding up nearly 45 million folks between them.  
• CBS' take on Wednesday night: Criminal Minds (seventh place, 17 million) beat ABC's Lost (10th place, 16.1 million) for the first time ever!
• ABC's take on Wednesday night: Lost maintained its edge over Criminal Minds among 18- to 49-year-olds on account of the median age of the Criminal Minds viewers is "more than 10 years older than the Lost viewer."  
• On Thursday, CBS' Survivor: Cook Islands (13th place, 15.3 million) mustered the strength to kick some sand at ABC's Ugly Betty (22nd place, 13.6 million).
• If you divide The Santa Clause 3's weekend box-office take of $19.5 million by the nation's average ticket price of $6.61, you get roughly 2.95 million tickets sold. And a smaller audience than the one assembled for an airing of the original Santa Clause (4.9 million viewers) on the Disney Channel.   
• NBC's Friday Night Lights (52nd place, 8.3 million) did better on a Monday than it normally does on a Tuesday. It didn't do much better than Studio 60, however, at holding onto the growing legion of Heroes fans (15th place, a season-high 14.9 million).
• Airing on Univision, the Latin Grammys (74th place, 5.7 million) put up its biggest numbers since its inaugural telecast on CBS in 2000.   
• Kidnapped hit a new ratings low: none. This, after NBC pulled the serial drama from Saturdays, after previously pulling it from Wednesdays. Don't expect a Kidnapped return unless the network comes up with an eighth day of the week.

In the battle of the networks, CBS and NBC claimed November sweeps victories. CBS was the most watched network, averaging 12.8 million viewers; NBC was the highest rated network among young adults who like football, superheroes and suitcases filled with money. 

ABC took second in total viewers (11.4 million), followed by Fox (10.9 million) and trailed by a wide margin by NBC (6.4 million), which apparently didn't have much to offer outside of football, superheroes and suitcases filled with money.

Led by its own superhero series, Smallville (77th place, 5 million), the CW assembled its 3.3 million viewers and took comfort in season-high numbers from the likes of Everybody Hates Chris (96th place, 3.6 million).

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

1. Desperate Housewives, ABC, 22.6 million
2. Sunday Night Football, NBC, 21.9 million
3. Grey's Anatomy, ABC, 21 million
4. CSI, CBS, 20.8 million
5. Dancing with the Stars (Tuesday), ABC, 20.5 million
6. Dancing with the Stars (Wednesday), ABC, 19.2 million
7. Criminal Minds, CBS, 17 million
8. Deal or No Deal (Monday), NBC, 16.9 million
9. CSI: NY, CBS, 16.6 million
10. Lost, ABC, 16.1 million