ABC/MARK BRENDELHow much did you love The Bachelor finale? How much did you love Jay Leno's Tonight Show return? And to complete the theme, how much did you love the Winter Olympics?
The surprising answers—and more questions about Saturday Night Live, The Marriage Ref and more—in the latest TV ratings quiz:
1. When was the last time you felt this deeply about The Bachelor? Maybe the last time you were on the market? The franchise's just-concluded 14th season was its most watched since Bachelor Bob Guiney in fall 2003, ABC said.
2. True or false: Last night's mountaintop proposal set a new Bachelor finale record. False. For now. While a whole lot of people watched Jake pop the question to Vienna—15 million, per early estimates—even more (15.5 million) watched Jason Mesnick pick the wrong beloved. But…ABC expects the final numbers to go up, so Bachelor Jake still has a shot at gold.
3. How did your plan to shun Jay Leno work? Horribly. Leno's Tonight Show re-premiere killed David Letterman's Late Show: 6.6 million viewers to 3.8 million.
4. If Leno did so great, why is Team CoCo chortling? O'Brien's first Tonight Show, all the way back in June, was watched by 9.2 million. Also, CBS said last night's Letterman was up among all-important young adults. (Leno, however, still won the demo crown.)
5. Is NBC missing Jay Leno at 10 p.m.? Nope. The second hour of last night's two-hour Law & Order block drew 2 million more viewers than Leno's season average in the time slot.
6. Did the Winter Olympics rate a gold, silver or bronze medal? For NBC, the games were golden—they even beat American Idol again on Thursday. All-time, though, the Vancouver edition ranks second behind the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding show in Lillehammer in 1994: 190 million total viewers to 204 million.
7. What's bigger—and colder—than the Grammys? Sunday afternoon's Olympic gold-medal hockey game between the United States and Canada averaged 27.6 million, which, yes, puts it above last month's prime-time Grammys telecast (25.9 million).
8. People didn't really fall for all those Marriage Ref commercials aired during the Olympics…um, right? Wrong. Sunday's premiere ranked 13th in Nielsen's latest weekly rankings, with 14.4 million viewers. The Jerry Seinfeld project strikes out on its own (read: minus the Olympics as a lead-in) on Thursday.
9. So far this season, Taylor Swift, Taylor Lautner and Megan Fox have hosted Saturday Night Live. Which guest host's stint scored the highest ratings? Go figure: Charles Barkley's back in January. Jennifer Lopez's show from last weekend is ranked second.
10. What was unusual, if arguably appropriate, about the weekly cable rankings? CNN's Saturday afternoon coverage of the Chilean earthquake was bigger than any prime-time series, including No. 1 drama Burn Notice (4.4 million).
This is the part where we usually list the top 10 broadcast network shows for the week ended Sunday. But this'll be quicker: The Olympics, American Idol, lather, rinse, repeat.
Instead, here's a look at the week's next 10 most-watched shows, per Nielsen Media Research:
- Vancouver Gold, 18 million
- Undercover Boss, 15.2 million
- The Marriage Ref, 14.4 million
- Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains, 11.6 million
- NCIS (repeat), 11.59 million
- The Bachelor, 11.3 million
- Desperate Housewives, 10.9 million
- 60 Minutes, 10.8 million
- Two and a Half Men (rerun), 10.3 million
- The Amazing Race, 10.2 million
(Originally published March 2, 2010, at 9:28 a.m. PT)
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Get the blow-by-blow rundown of Bachelor Jake's proposal to Vienna right here!