It was business—big business—as usual for Kourtney & Kim Take New York and The Walking Dead.
Here's what the shows' Sunday-night TV ratings performances meant:
For Kourtney & Kim, the reality-show's season premiere, which scored a series-best 3.2 million viewers for an opener, showed audiences were still married to the reality clan, even if Kim Kardashian was divorcing Kris Humphries.
For The Walking Dead, the zombie-drama's fall-season finale, which scared up 6.6 million viewers, showed audiences were hanging with its twists and turns—its numbers were dead even with the show's lofty season average so far, if down a touch from its season opener.
Elsewhere on Sunday, an all-new Once Upon a Time (estimated 10.7 million viewers) was down, but basically its usual self, too: the biggest thing on broadcast TV outside of football, and football-boosted 60 Minutes.
While the weekly Nielsen rankings will be delayed by the Thanksgiving holiday, here are ratings winners and losers from the week that was:
• Dancing With the Stars results show (19.6 viewers): J.R. Martinez's ballroom triumph was down about 5 million viewers from Jennifer Grey's win a year ago. On the upside, the show did hit a Tuesday season high, and Martinez did avoid starring in the least-watched DWTS fall finale ever. That honor (?) remains with Donny Osmond and his November 2009 victory (19.3 milllion).
• Charlie Brown and Lady Gaga: On turkey night, the round-headed kid's off-repeated Thanksgiving cartoon outdrew the pop star's all-new special, A Very Gaga Thanksgiving, an estimated 5.8 million viewers to 5.5 million viewers. You might be surprised to learn, however, that Gaga was a better fit for the holiday crowd than Beyoncé—ABC said the fame monster outrated the diva's own holiday-weekend special from last year, but neither Gaga nor Brown were a match for the biggest post-feast show: a rerun of The Big Bang Theory.
• Scott McCreery and Lauren Alaina: Both American Idol alums had rough goings on Thanksgiving, but if there's a winner here it's probably McCreery whose lip-syncing trouble on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was watched live by a somewhat smaller mass of people than Alaina's National Anthem woes at the Green Bay Packers-Detroit Lions football game.