View Ratings Not Rosie

All the controversy, not quite all the ratings.

So went Whoopi Goldberg's first day on the job with ABC's The View.

Thanks to Goldberg's statements on Tuesday's show about disgraced football star Michael Vick and dogfighting, The View generated enough headlines to hearken back to a good old-fashioned Rosie O'Donnell-Elisabeth Hasselbeck argument. But in the ratings department, Goldberg's debut came up 1 million viewers short when matched against O'Donnell's debut a year ago, preliminary ratings showed.

Numbers-wise, Tuesday's View averaged an estimated 3.4 million, which would make it the 10-year-old show's second-best season premiere ever, ABC said.

The first-best season premiere ever?

Last September's, which featured the return of O'Donnell to daytime television. That episode averaged 4.4 million.

O'Donnell departed The View last May after one (almost) full season. Her exit, announced in April, was hastened after an on-air blowup with Hasselbeck.

Goldberg was tapped last month to fill O'Donnell's moderator seat. Another cohost, to fill Star Jones' long-vacant chair, will be named next Monday.

The new View talkers had best have their mouths ready to go. O'Donnell's rabble-rousing run helped boost the ABC show's ratings by double digits.

On its first day, at least, the Goldberg era kept pace with the O'Donnell era, with its viewership numbers up 3 percent over the show's season-long average.

And in her first week, at least, Goldberg, who spent Wednesday's show trying to defang the dog controversy, sounded as if she has one sure viewer.

When asked on her blog if she intended to catch Goldberg on The View, O'Donnell wrote, in her usual lowercase way, "of course."

Elsewhere, here's a look at ratings highlights for the TV week ended Sunday, per Nielsen Media Research stats:

• In an ice-cold summer week for the networks, a repeat of CBS' Two and a Half Men (first place, 10.3 million) was the only broadcast or cable show to top 10 million viewers.
• CBS' Tuesday edition of Power of 10 (second place, 9.9 million) was the most-watched new show; ABC's Set for Life (83rd place, 3 million) wasn't.
• Fox was led by a repeat of House (eighth place, 8 million); ABC, by a repeat of Just for Laughs (12th place, 7.2 million); and out-of-luck NBC, by a brand-new Last Comic Standing (14th place, 6.5 million).
• The college-populated Saturday Night Football (45th place, 4.9 million), which kicked off its second season for ABC, just isn't packing them in like the NFL-powered Monday Night Football did. Or even like last season's Saturday Night Football did.
• A Sunday night NASCAR race on ESPN (6.4 million viewers) was TV's most-watched sporting event, topping preseason NFL, opening-week college football, pennant-race baseball and the Food Network Challenge (974,000 for a Wednesday night episode).
• ABC's Fat March (55th place, 4.6 million) picked up the pace among young adults, 18-34, hopefully without necessitating extra oxygen.   
• A Sunday night rerun of the CW's Smallville (167th place, 733,000) was notable only in how, well, smallville its audience was.
• On cable, TNT's The Closer (7.8 million) led the way, again, despite relatively big weeks for TNT's Saving Grace (4.5 million) and MTV's The Hills (4.2 million).
• A Saturday night episode of Disney Channel's Hannah Montana (3.9 million) was cable's most-watched comedy series; a Tuesday night episode Oxygen's Tori & Dean: Inn Love (481,000) wasn't.

In the network races, CBS' repeat-laden lineup (averaging 6.8 million viewers) blew away Fox's (4.4 million), ABC's (4.3 million), NBC's (4.2 million) and the CW's (1.8 million).

ESPN (3 million) was the most-watched cable network in prime time, followed by TNT (2.8 million) and the Disney Channel (2.77 million).

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. Two and a Half Men, CBS, 10.3 million viewer
2. Power of 10 (Tuesday), CBS, 9.9 million viewers
3. CSI: Miami, CBS, 9.1 million viewers
4. CSI: NY, CBS, 8.9 million viewers
5. Criminal Minds, CBS, 8.5 million viewers
6. Power of 10 (Wednesday), CBS, 8.3 million viewers
7. Big Brother (Tuesday), CBS, 8.1 million viewers
8. House, Fox, 8 million viewers
9. CSI, CBS, 7.8 million viewers
10. Rules of Engagement, CBS, 7.6 million viewers