Superstars of Dance Clicks; Lipstick Jungle Doesn't

Mon., Jan. 5, 2009 1:26 PM PST by Joal Ryan

Chris Haston /NBC

Weekend TV's Big Winners: Dancers, or, as they should now be called, Prime Time's Most Bankable Kind of People.

Last night's two-hour premiere of NBC's Superstars of Dance (10.5 million overall viewers, per Nielsen estimates) drew more eyeballs at 10 p.m. than either CBS' all-new The Unit (9.7 million) or ABC's all-new Brothers & Sisters (9.2 million). The latter show won the hour in the 18-49 demo.

Weekend TV's Shakiest Return: Oh, sure, ABC's Desperate Housewives (14.3 million) was down nearly 2 million viewers from its last new episode, but that's nothing—after all, excluding football, the series was Sunday's No. 1 show in viewers and adults 18-49.

No, the shakiest return was posted on Friday by NBC's Lipstick Jungle (4.2 million).

With its life on the line, the series added about 300,000 viewers from its most recent new episode. But, as reported by MediaWeek, in its time slot, it ran third in viewers, and fourth in the demo.

This coming Friday's show is Lipstick Jungle's 13th (final?) episode of the season (ever?).

Weekend TV's Biggest Dreamers: The suits at CBS who confused 2009 for 1979, and idealistically scheduled the premiere of a brand-new show on Saturday night. The Ashton Kutcher-produced Game Show in My Head (3.4 million estimated viewers, as reported by MediaWeek) was punked as a result.

Guess Who Missed Sarah Palin? Last night's two-hour Saturday Night Live sports-themed special averaged only 5.7 million viewers for NBC.

Guess Who Missed Football? Ratings for Fox's Sunday repeat of its 24 prequel were pretty good in the first hour (7.1 million), and pretty weak in the second hour (4.8 million). Just so you know, the first hour aired right after Fox's NFL playoff game (24.8 million from 7-8 p.m.).