Who knew mastery of the Loverboy songbook was the key to success?

The Singing Bee, the new NBC game show featuring extra-excited folk trying to fight their lyrical way through "Working for the Weekend" and the like, came out swinging last week, posting TV's biggest premiere of the summer.

More than 13 million people with a presumed working knowledge of that song that host Joey Fatone used to sing with 'N Sync ("Bye Bye Bye"), and/or a fascination with the show's all-singing, all-dancing, barely clothed house singers, the Honey Bees, caught the first episode, per the latest Nielsen Media Research rankings.

According to long-suffering NBC, The Singing Bee was the highest-rated summer-series debut among young adults, aged 18-49, since the late Meet My Folks made a good first impression back in July 2002.

Or to put it another way: The Singing Bee was no Victoria Beckham: Coming to America. (The ratings, or lack thereof, for the latter NBC special will be reflected in next week's Nielsen rankings.)

The Singing Bee is not to be mistaken for Fox's Don't Forget the Lyrics, although it could. Be mistaken for it, that is.

Don't Forget the Lyrics is the new Fox game show featuring extra-excited folk trying to fight their lyrical way through "867-5309/Jenny" and the like. So as to prevent confusion, Wayne Brady hosts instead of Fatone; the Honey Bees do not appear.

Perhaps owing to the lack of Honey Bees, Don't Forget the Lyrics wasn't as big as The Singing Bee, but it was still plenty big for yet another a show about people who can't remember much. Don't Forget bowed on Wednesday before a summer-strong, 8.3 million viewers (12th place). Its Thursday followup did even better—8.4 million, 11th place.

The game show How Does "Blinded By the Light" Go Again? was not ranked by Nielsen as it does not exist.

But give it another week.

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

• If cable's TNT was a broadcast network, its drama series, The Closer (7.4 million viewers), would have landed in the top 20.
• If cable's USA was a broadcast network, the sixth-season premiere of its detective series, Monk (4.8 million), would have beat everything in time slot. Oh, wait... Cable or no, Monk did beat everything in its 9 p.m., Friday home.
• Lifetime renewed Army Wives (3.7 million) for a second season; it bragged about Side Order of Life (2.4 million), the new Jason Priestley drama, and State of Mind (2.3 million), the new Lili Taylor drama.
• Week after week after week, viewers are not treating Bravo's Hey, Paula (354,000) like the gift it is.
• Members of the Tri Delts might be pleased to know ABC Family's look at sorority and fraternity life, Greek, wasn't the BMOC in its cable premiere (1.1 million viewers). They might be less pleased to know more than twice as many people checked out its rerun on ABC (101st place, 2.7 million).
• BET's Laguna Beach, sorry, Baldwin Hills premiered with back-to-back episodes that averaged about 1.1 million lifestyle looky-loos.
• If cable (or satellite) is the future destination of daytime soaps, then at least the environment is a hospitable one. SOAPnet scored its most ever viewers, 1 million, for the premiere of General Hospital: Night Shift, the prime-time spinoff of the ABC daytime drama.
• There is more to an 11-year-old's life than Disney Channel's Hannah Montana; there is, for instance, Disney Channel's The Suite Life of Zack & Cody (5.7 million), cable's most-watched comedy series of the week.
• ESPN's The Bronx Is Burning (2.2 million) didn't get off to as big a start as the sports network's last original series, 2003's Playmakers, but at least dead Billy Martin can't complain about the former, like alive NFL executives did about the latter.
• Compared to last year's show, last week's ESPY Awards telecast on ESPN whiffed, with viewership down 22 percent, from 3.6 million to 2.8 million.
• Compared to the ESPYs, baseball's All-Star Game on Fox (second place, 12.5 million) was a grand slam: Viewership was "only" down 13 percent from last year, and, percentage-wise, the game was the week's biggest draw, managing to unite 15 percent of the TV nation behind one program.
• ESPN's coverage of the All-Star Game Homerun Derby attracted the week's second-biggest cable audience: 6.8 million long-ball fans.
• Univision's coverage of the Mexico-Argentina soccer match from the Copa America tournament did the Homerun Derby one numeral better: 6.9 million viewers, enough to give the contest 26th place in the broadcast rankings.
• CBS' NCIS (fifth place, 9.7 million) was the most watched broadcast network rerun; Fox's Standoff (94th place, 3 million) was the least watched new episode of anything not culled from On the Lot (103rd place, 2.5 million).
• Mandy Patinkin has dumped Criminal Minds; series fans have not followed suit: 7.2 million diehards (20th place) checked out last week's repeat.

Overall, the broadcast networks continue to sweat out a pretty cold summer, save for Fox, which has posted small gains, and won the week, averaging 6.7 million viewers.

CBS (6.3 million) slipped to second, followed by NBC (5.8 million), ABC (4.4 million) and the CW (1.8 million).

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

1. The Singing Bee, NBC, 13.3 million viewers
2. MLB All-Star Game, Fox, 12.5 million viewers
3. America's Got Talent, NBC, 11.4 million viewers
4. So You Think You Can Dance (Thursday), Fox, 9.7 million viewers
5. NCIS, CBS, 9.68 million viewers
6. CSI, CBS, 9.4 million viewers
7. CSI: NY, CBS, 8.7 million viewers
8. MLB All-Star Game Pregame, Fox, 8.6 million viewers
9. Two and a Half Men, CBS, 8.5 million viewers
10. Law & Order: SVU, NBC, 8.495 million viewers