Viewers Head for The Hills (and China, Too)

If TV's new reality is going to be reality, viewers are buying. For now, anyway.

The season finales of CBS' Survivor: China and MTV's The Hills dominated the latest Nielsen rankings.

Flight-attendant Todd Herzog clinched Survivor's $1 million prize before an average of 15.2 million, good for second place among all broadcast shows.

The Hills closed out its third season of histrionics before 4.7 million devotees. The episode, ending on a Paris-bound Lauren Conrad, and a fiancé-unbound Heidi Montag, was cable's most watched show in which the fashion-forward participants wore neither football helmets nor wrestling spandex.

Though Survivor had the bigger audience, The Hills had the more impressive stats.

Sunday's Survivor goes down in the books as the second lowest-rated Survivor finale in show history, after last May's Survivor: Fiji sign off.

The Hills' closeout, meanwhile, goes down as the show's most watched episode ever. Not only that, according to MTV, the installment was up 60 percent over season two's finale, and 83 percent over season one's.

Both Survivor and The Hills sported winning accessories: Survivor's live after-show averaged 12.3 million viewers; The Hills' post-finale denouement averaged 4 million.

Along with its penultimate episode, which aired in the show's usual Thursday time slot, and averaged 14.5 million viewers, the Survivor franchise accounted for one-fifth of broadcast TV's Top 15 shows.

In addition to Survivor and The Hills, the NBC game show Deal or No Deal, a shadow of its former phenom self for much of this season, placed a trio of episodes in the Top 20. There were also strong performances from NBC's The Biggest Loser (20th place, 9.8 million) and, on cable, VH1's I Love New York 2 (3.6 million)—two shows that were closing in on their own season finales.

Already a prime-time staple, reality TV looks to become a dominant force this winter should the strike-stricken networks run out of scripts and, in turn, scripted shows.

Since The Hills doesn't rely on scripts—no, really—it's good to go for an eight-episode addendum starting in March. Likewise, Survivor will be back for its latest season in February.

The question is whether viewers will have had their fill of reality by then.

Here, meanwhile, are the other ratings highlights for the TV week ended Sunday:

• With Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives taking the week off (and presumably squirreling away whatever new episodes they have left), there was nothing but daylight for an all-new CSI—TV's most watched show, averaging 19.9 million, and TV's highest-rated show among 18- to 49-year-olds.
• For the second straight week, no single show topped 20 million viewers. And no show other than CSI topped 15.5 million.
• CBS' Moonlight (39th place, 7.6 million) is to audiences what garlic is to a vampire. Judging by the numbers of its Friday lead-in, Ghost Whisperer (23rd place, 9.8 million), the bloodsucking detective series repelled about 2 million viewers who apparently returned to the network to catch its 10 p.m. show, Numb3rs (24th place, 9.7 million).
• Serving a demand that doesn't seem to be there, CBS offered up two new episodes of Cane (34th place, 7.99 million; 35th place, 7.94 million) in one week—on one night.
• On the upside of bad ratings, if the networks resort to wall-to-wall reruns later this year, previously aired episodes of NBC's Journeyman (65th place, 5.3 million), ABC's October Road (66th place, 5.2 million) and Fox's K-Ville (67th place, 5.1 million) will be new to most viewers.
• Best-case scenario for ABC's Men in Trees (80th place, 4.1 million): Every single person who went to a Friday-night holiday bash set his or her DVR to record the Anne Heche series. 
• ABC Family Channel scored again with another holiday-themed TV-movie: Snowglobe (4.4 million), cable's most watched scripted show, not counting The Hills, which actually isn't scripted—no, really.
• The latest drama on Project Runway—Jack Mackenroth's abrupt departure; Chris March's unexpected return—made for Bravo's most watched hour.
• TBS' House of Payne (3.2 million) outdrew every CW comedy.
• A fiery Nip/Tuck (2.5 million) didn't fire up the FX show's ratings—it's nowhere near the power it was two or three seasons ago.
• As it turns out, holding a debate on a Wednesday afternoon, as the Republican Presidential hopefuls did, is only a slightly better idea than holding a debate on a Thursday afternoon, as the Democratic contenders did. All told, the GOP one maxed at about 1 million viewers on Fox News; the Democratic one topped out at 977,00 on CNN.

Overall, it was another weak week, with CBS repeating as the most watched network (11.1 million) and the highest rated network among young adults.

In cable, pro wrestling was very good to USA, which was the top prime-time network, averaging 3 million viewers. ABC Family (2.6 million) and Disney Channel (2.57 million) had the holidays to thank for their top finishes.

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. CSI, CBS, 19.9 million viewers
2. Survivor: China (Sunday), CBS, 15.2 million viewers
3. Without a Trace, CBS, 15.1 million viewers
4. Sunday Night Football, NBC, 14.6 million viewers
5. Survivor: China (Thursday), CBS, 14.5 million viewers
6. CSI: NY, CBS, 14.4 million viewers
7. Criminal Minds, CBS, 14.2 million viewers
8. CSI: Miami, CBS, 14.1 million viewers
9. The OT (Sunday football overrun), Fox, 13.5 million viewers
10. 60 Minutes, CBS, 13.4 million viewers