How's The View? Good question. Tough answer.

Ratings for the ABC morning show are up, and down in the wake of cohost Rosie O'Donnell's departure.

To repeat: up and down.

For the week of June 11, the most recent ratings available, the O'Donnell-less View averaged 3.4 million viewers, per Nielsen Media Research stats. That's up 20 percent from the same week last year.

So, O'Donnell or no, The View's living large.

One thing, though...

O'Donnell's final days on the show drew even bigger ratings: 3.7 million for the week of May 14, and 3.8 million for the week of May 21.

The O'Donnell-Elisabeth Hasselbeck splitscreen bout seen round YouTube occurred on May 23. O'Donnell never returned to the set after the blowup. Previously scheduled to end her yearlong run in June, O'Donnell officially called it quits two days later, on May 25, three weeks ahead of schedule.

The fallout from the high-profile divorce propelled The View's ratings even higher during the week of May 28-June 1, with the show averaging 3.83 million people who had to hear Barbara Walters weigh in on matters, or witness Hasselbeck's assertions that she and O'Donnell were working through things. (According to O'Donnell, they didn't, and they might never.)

As the show has gotten further away from the O'Donnell-Hasselbeck controversy, the numbers have stalled. But they haven't crashed. And, yes, are higher than they were a year ago at this time.

But is The View riding its own wave, or is it still coasting on the numbers that O'Donnell helped pump up?

Walters, for one, votes for the former. Said the broadcast legend in the New York Times last week: "It shows The View is its own franchise."

The real test comes in September, when the show presumably will have a new cohost, and its numbers can be judged directly against those put up by the O'Donnell era. (O'Donnell joined the coffee table club last Sept. 5.)

Until then, The View might just be a little tough to see.

Meanwhile, in prime-time ratings highlights for the week ended Sunday:

• The summer is hot; the ratings are not. The big four broadcast networks, save for Fox, are down double-digit percentages in viewers. (Fox is up a whopping 2 percent.) Even worse for the suits, young adults don't want any part of, say, Ugly Betty and Las Vegas reruns. All four networks are down in viewers aged 18-34; ABC and NBC are way, way down—17 percent and 21 percent, respectively.
• Save the ventriloquist, save the network? Lowly NBC actually aired the week's four most-watched shows, starting with America's Got Talent (first place, 12.5 million), and followed by the Princes William and Harry interview on Dateline NBC (second place, 12.2 million), the Monday edition of Deal or No Deal (third place, 12.1 million), and a Law & Order: SVU repeat (fourth place, 9.5 million).  
• Three summer shows that have a pulse: Fox's Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? (seventh place, 9.239 million); Wednesday's So You Think You Can Dance (ninth place, 9.2 million); and Hell's Kitchen (16th place, 7.6 million). 
• Three summer shows that have shallow, but steady breathing: ABC's The Next Best Thing (26th place, 6.2 million) and American Inventor (27th place, 6.1 million); and, NBC's Last Comic Standing (28th place, 6 million).
• One summer show that's DOA: The CW soap Hidden Palms (126th place, 1.3 million for its first episode; 120th place, 1.5 million for its second episode).
• It probably isn't fair to say Americans have no interest in the filmmaking process. It is, however, fair to say Americans have no interest in Fox's On the Lot (108th place, 2.5 million).
• If you read The Loop's title real fast in the TV listings, you could mistake it for On the Lot, which might explain why no one's watching the Fox comedy, either—103rd place, 2.7 million for its first episode; 97th place, 3.1 million for its second episode.
• Hope the members of ABC's The Ex-Wives Club (72nd place, 3.8 million) all get good alimony, because it doesn't look like they'll be getting much in the way of residuals.
• How much fun is it to have previously unaired episodes of your already canceled series burned off in June? As ABC's Traveler (52nd place, 4.5 million), NBC's Studio 60 (53rd place, 4.4 million) and Fox's Standoff (89th place, 3.4 million) can attest: not much.
• No, NBC's Office marathon wasn't a blockbuster—the "biggest" episode of the bunch drew 4.3 million people (57th place)—but at least it didn't cost $175 million to produce. 
• In cable, where summer actually seems to work to shows' benefits, the season premiere of TNT's The Closer (8.8 million) led the way. Other standouts: Lifetime's Army Wives (3.9 million); Tyler Perry's TBS comedy, House of Payne (3.4 million); and the History Channel's Ice Road Truckers (2.6 million), the reality series about, yes, truckers who drive on ice roads.
• A new episode of Hannah Montana scored the Disney Channel comedy's biggest yet audience: 7.4 million—only 3.4 million of which, by the way, were between the ages of 9 and 14, which means the rest of us have some fessin' up to do.

Overall, CBS' crime-time reruns, led by NCIS (fifth place, 9.4 million), helped the network to a win as the week's most-watched network, relatively speaking, of course.

The network averaged 7.1 million people with no other apparent entertainment options. It was followed by NBC (6.3 million), Fox (5.5 million), a barely watched ABC (4 million) and a scarcely watched CW (1.9 million).

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

1. America's Got Talent, NBC, 12.5 million viewers
2. Dateline NBC, NBC, 12.2 million viewers
3. Deal or No Deal (Monday), NBC, 12.1 million viewers
4. Law & Order: SVU, NBC, 9.5 million viewers
5. NCIS, CBS, 9.4 million viewers
6. CSI, CBS, 9.3 million viewers
7. Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, Fox, 9.239 million viewers
8. Two and a Half Men, CBS, 9.238 million viewers
9. So You Think You Can Dance (Wednesday), Fox, 9.2 million viewers
10. CSI: Miami, CBS, 9.1 million viewers