So, when does American Idol start up again?

Fox may be asking itself that question after a rough start to its fall season. If it wasn't the Emmys sinking, or one of its new shows tanking, it was Prison Break's season premiere getting beat out by sitcom reruns.

Last things first: Prison Break. The drama's third-season opener on Monday night averaged an estimated 7.4 million viewers, preliminary Nielsen Media Research stats show. It was the series' least watched premiere, down nearly 2 million viewers from last fall's.

Previously viewed episodes of How I Met Your Mother (10.9 million) and The New Adventures of Old Christine (12.4 million) on CBS locked out Prison Break in the 8-9 p.m. hour.

Prison Break's numbers, as well as those from the rest of Monday night's shows, will be reflected in next week's Nielsen rankings.

To say that Nashville, the first new show of the 2007-08 season to make it to air, fared even worse than Prison Break doesn't say the half of it: It fared much, much, much worse.

The reality drama, from the production company behind Laguna Beach, made the least of its jump-start on the fall season by losing to the rerun of one show that doesn't replay especially well (NBC's Las Vegas—72nd place, 3.9 million) and to the rerun of another show that doesn't replay well at all (CBS' Jericho—89th place, 3 million).

Nashville averaged just 2.7 million viewers, 1 million fewer even than what Laguna Beach spinoff, The Hills, delivered to cable's MTV last week.

Perhaps the worst news of all for Nashville: It didn't merit a single positive adjective, much less a single complete sentence in Fox's weekly ratings recap. Such silence is typically deadly.

Nashville is part of Fox's all-new, unscripted Friday night. In the 8-9 p.m. hour, the network got decent results from Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? (55th place, 5 million), which emerged as the top-rated show among 18- to 49-year-olds in its time-slot premiere.

Fox also had success Monday with the series premiere of K-Ville, the new New Orleans cop show starring Hustle & Flow's Anthony Anderson. It averaged an estimated 9 million viewers and claimed the night's demo crown.

On the further upside for Fox, K-Ville, the network noted, "showed impressive growth over its lead-in." On the further downside, K-Ville's lead-in was Prison Break.

It was tough to tell, meanwhile, who was the biggest loser at the Emmys (second place, 13 million).

Was it the TV Academy, which saw its awards show hit a record low in viewers, and corral only 12 percent of the TV nation, compared to the Academy Awards, which still pulls together at least one-third of all viewers each year? Which desperately sought some American Idol magic, right down to the choice of Ryan Seacrest as host, only to come up 17 million viewers shy of last May's Idol finale?

Was it Fox, which saw its first shot at the Emmys in four years sacked for a loss by NBC's Sunday Night Football (first place, 15.3 million)?

Or was it NBC, which saw its viewer-starved shows, such as 30 Rock, combine to win more Emmys (19) than any other broadcast network...on a night when fewer people than ever watched the telecast?

Well, it was probably still James Gandolfini.

Here's a look at other ratings highlights for the TV week ended Sunday, per Nielsen Media Research stats

• NFL football hurt the Emmys, but what's continuing to hurt NFL football? A week after Sunday Night Football got off to a smaller-than-last-year start for NBC, Monday Night Football got off to a smaller-than-last-year start for ESPN: 11.1 million viewers for the first half of its opening-week doubleheader (as opposed to 12.6 million for last year's first game); and 8.5 million viewers for the nightcap (as opposed to 10.5 million in 2006).
• Two weeks into the Sunday Night Football season, NBC's franchise is down 18 percent in viewers from last year.
• ABC saw improvement from its own football franchise, the college-oriented Saturday Night Football (21st place, 7.1 million), up 45 percent from its premiere week.
• On cable, no series came close to the season finale of TNT's The Closer (9.2 million). If it were a broadcast network show, it would have ranked seventh for the week.
• The other top-rated cable series were the same old, same old: TNT's Saving Grace (5.2 million); USA's Monk (5 million), Psych (4.2 million) and Burn Notice (4 million); and Nickelodeon's Drake & Josh (4.2 million).
• Baseball games don't bring 4.5 million viewers to ESPN; New York Yankees/Boston Red Sox games do.
• Oddly enough, President Bush's prime-time address on the Iraq War went over bigger with the Fox News Channel crowd (3.1 million) than the CNN contingent (1.4 million).
• The FX comedy It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia saw the light with a series-best 2.3 million viewers for its third-season premiere.
• ABC Family's greek-life drama, Greek, closed out its first season before a series-high 1.4 million. 
• Star Jones Reynolds' new Court TV show hit a weekly high on Friday with 264,000 viewers, managing a time-slot victory over Leave It to Beaver reruns on TV Land (237,500).
• Kevin Smith has a new line for his résumé: Director of Lifetime's most watched chick flick of the week, Jersey Girl (2.2 million).
• ABC's Fat March (57th place, 4.8 million) is over; the weight-loss adventure is just beginning on NBC's Biggest Loser (15th place, 7.8 million).

Overall, the Emmys helped Fox win, well, second. Probably. CBS looked to claim a victory as the week's most watched network, but the data was incomplete Tuesday. (CBS' prime-time football numbers were taking some time to crunch.)

In cable, ESPN (4.1 million), USA (2.9 million) and TNT (2.7 million) were the three most watched prime-time networks.

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. NBC Sunday Night Football (San Diego vs. New England), NBC, 15.3 million viewers
2. 59th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, Fox, 13 million viewers
3. 60 Minutes, CBS, 11.5 million viewers
4. NBC Sunday Night Football Pre-Kick, NBC, 11.1 million viewers
5. Two and a Half Men, CBS, 10 million viewers
6. Without a Trace, CBS, 9.5 million viewers
7. Big Brother (Thursday), CBS, 8.9 million viewers
8. CSI: NY, CBS, 8.87 million viewers
9. Football Night in America, NBC, 8.6 million viewers
10. CSI, CBS, 8.4 million viewers