Rudolph Nose Ratings

Wed., Dec. 27, 2006 5:49 PM PST by Natalie Finn

And rounding out the Nielsens' top 10 in the week leading up to Christmas Eve…it's Rudolph, by a nose.

The loveable animated reindeer attracted about 300,000 more viewers than a somewhat less cuddly James Woods in a repeat of Shark, good enough for 10th place in the Nielsen rankings during a week lousy with repeats, football and perennial holiday classics.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which was digitally remastered in 2005 but for the most part still relies on its 1964-era stop-action animation charm to win over new generations, pulled in 10.6 million pairs of starry eyes on Thursday, helping to make CBS the most-watched network for the umpteenth time this season and giving it a rare win in the 18-49 demographic (3.3 million).

Also aiding the network's cause were five minutes of post-game analysis, a 60 Minutes clipfest and a host of crime procedural do-overs.

The 17.2 million who sipped eggnog while learning more about why their favorite football team will or will not be making the playoffs made CBS' NFL Postgame Show the most watched program of the week, beating out the week's second most watched show, NBC's Deal or No Deal, by almost 2 million viewers.

Also sneaking into the top 10 was the Dec. 18 premiere of NBC's Identity, the "which stranger is the nuclear physicist and which one is Jan from The Brady Bunch?" game show hosted by Penn Jillette.

Identity's debut pulled in 12.3 million viewers (fourth place), but by the time the five-night special concluded on Friday, only 7.8 million people were around to check out special guests Jerry "Leave It to Beaver" Mathers and Miss USA 2006 Tara Conner (in an appearance taped before her run-in with the Donald).

Some other observations from the week that was:

People have way less time to watch Christmas specials the closer it gets to Christmas. After Rudolph, the next most watched prime-time holiday programming was ABC's I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown (16th place, 8.9 million), CBS' A Very Married Christmas (53rd place, 5.7 million) and Home for the Holidays (60th place, 5.3 million), and NBC's airing of It's a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve (67th place, 4.9 million). On the bright side, perhaps more people were busy appreciating their own lives, rather than George Bailey's.
The hills were alive with The Sound of Music once again and 8.3 million (21st place) witnessed it on ABC Saturday night. Of course, about half of those people are descendants of the real-life Von Trapp family.
Much like the Colts, ESPN's Monday Night Football obliterated the competition last week, with 14.2 million turning out to see Indianapolis clinch the AFC South division title with a win over the Cincinnati Bengals.
The British were coming, and no one cared. The second installment of Top Model: British Invasion barely scratched the catwalk on the CW (116th place, 1.7 million).

Thanks largely in part to fictional forensic pathology, CBS won the week in total viewers with 8.8 million, followed by NBC (7.3 million), ABC (6.3 million), Fox (5.6 million), Univision (3.3 million, buoyed by a bunch of episodes of the hit telenovela, La Fea Más Bella, Mexico's second Betty la Fea spin off) and the CW (2.5 million).

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