ABC/RON TOM; FOXWisteria Lane residents, be advised: Stewie's plan for world domination is coming together.
Hot off its historic Emmy nod, Fox's Family Guy scored its biggest audience in more than a year: 10.2 million, for its eighth-season premiere, preliminary Nielsen estimates showed.
Even more impressive, in the 9 p.m. half-hour, Family Guy dominated a downsized Desperate Housewives among young people who weren't watching the football game on NBC.
All in all, it was a pretty ugly night for Housewives.
The pretty: The six-season-old ABC soap ended up as Sunday's most-watched scripted show, with 13.2 million fans. The ugly: It lost about 5.5 million fans from last fall's opener.
How'd the premieres go for Family Guy's new neighbor and the other returning shows?
Good for The Cleveland Show; okay for everybody else.
Cleveland, a Family Guy spinoff, looked fat at 8:30 p.m., with 9.4 million viewers. Fox said it was its most-watched comedy premiere since 2003.
Like its Desperate Housewives lead-in, ABC's Brothers & Sisters was down from last fall's premiere: from 12 million viewers to 9.3 million. Still, it looked like it edged its 10 p.m. competition, CBS' Cold Case.
Because of a late-running football game on CBS, all of that network's numbers were in flux. But it appeared The Amazing Race was in the neighborhood of last year's premiere.
Seth Rogen wrote The Simpsons to a solid billionth season premiere (8.2 million). American Dad (7.1 million) was the weak link in Fox's toon lineup, but was still up over last fall's opener.