Mel B lost. Emmitt Smith remained undefeated.
Tuesday's Dancing with the Stars finale, featuring the demise of Scary Spice and the presentation of the glitter-ball trophy to race-car driver Helio Castroneves, averaged 24.9 million viewers, final Nielsen Media Research stats showed.
Dancing was TV's most watched show of the night and the series' most watched episode of the season. But when ranked among previous finales—the franchise just completed its fifth season—Tuesday's two-hour special could do no better than Marie Osmond. It finished third.
Drew Lachey's crowning moment in the winter of 2006 was watched by more people (27.2 million) than Castroneves'; Smith's victory in the fall of 2006 (27.5 million) was watched by more people than any other Dancing moment, before or since.
The Castroneves-Brown showdown—Osmond was eliminated about half-way through Tuesday's episode—did spark more interest than the Apolo Anton Ohno-Joey Fatone matchup last spring. Ohno skated to a win in an episode that averaged 23 million.
On Tuesday, Dancing viewership peaked in the final half hour, from 10:30-11 p.m., when the show averaged 25.7 million.
Castroneves, 32, clearly liked the end result: He was still "woo-hoo"-ing during an interview early Wednesday on Ryan Seacrest's syndicated morning radio show. Meanwhile, Brown, also 32, took to the Spice Girls' official Website to express thanks to Spice fans and to congratulate her rival.
"Well done to Helio for winning (Grrrr... just kidding, ha ha ha!)," the singer known for her "Rah!" roar wrote.
Just as Mel B couldn't quite overcome the supercharged Castroneves on the dance floor, Dancing couldn't entirely take down Fox's House in the ratings race. When the two shows went head-to-head from 9-10 p.m., Dancing scored more overall viewers (24.3 million to 17 million), but the Fox show scored more 18- to 49-year-olds. (Maybe all that Osmond talk of her being so old finally convinced the kids that she—and her show—were old?)
So as to not be left out of the Nielsen discussion, CBS, which was a nonfactor on Tuesday after NCIS (estimated 17.04 million), preemptively declared itself the winner of the November sweeps, which end Wednesday night. Per the network's projections, it'll wind up with the most viewers, and ABC will wind up with the most demographically desirable viewers. (CBS didn't play up that last part.)
Elsewhere in ratings news, cable numbers, released later than usual Tuesday because of the Thanksgiving holiday, showed Tim Allen probably doesn't get paid enough for being Tim Allen.
A Disney Channel broadcast of Allen's 2002 The Santa Clause 2 averaged 6.2 million viewers. On cable, nothing, except ESPN's Monday Night Football (9.6 million), was bigger. In theory, if every Santa Clause 2 viewer bought a full-priced ticket at $6.58 a pop (the nation's average ticket price, per Box Office Mojo), the movie would have topped the three-day weekend box office with $40.8 million.
Other prime-time cable shows that put up big, if not blockbuster, numbers for the TV week ended last Sunday: ESPN's Thanksgiving college-football offering of USC vs. Arizona State (5.1 million—nearly 40 percent more viewers than the NFL Network's own Thanksgiving offering of pro football); Disney Channel's High School Musical 2—yes, again (4.9 million); VH1's I Love New York 2 (4.4 million); and MTV's The Hills (4.3 million).
Sarah Jessica Parker appearance or no, Bravo's Project Runway (2.2 million) was down from its premiere, but was still its network's most watched show.