Rudolph holiday TV special tops Victoria’s Secret

December 06, 2011|David Bauder, AP Television Writer

Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer has more juice than the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, but the lingerie-clad runway models trump Santa Claus.

It’s the holiday season, mixing in old and new traditions with typical prime-time television fare. Holiday specials can earn Nielsen ratings company bragging rights, too.

“Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer’’ was the most-watched special of last week, with more than 12 million viewers, with the advantage of being on CBS’ powerful Tuesday night. The Victoria’s Secret special, also on CBS on Tuesday, was second with 10.4 million viewers. The Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Rockefeller Center had 9.4 million viewers, one of NBC’s strongest shows for the week. Specials highlighting the Grinch and Santa Claus, both on ABC, each had fewer than 8 million viewers.

The most-watched prime-time show of the week wasn’t really a show. Fox calls it “The OT,’’ but it’s really just football highlights shown when Sunday’s late afternoon game runs long, and in this case it was a gripping finish between the New York Giants and the unbeaten Green Bay Packers. The Packers beat the Giants 38-35 on a last-second field goal to move to 12-0.

CBS won the post-Thanksgiving week, averaging 9 million viewers (5.6 rating, 9 share) in prime time.

A ratings point represents 1,147,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 114.7 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

Fox had 8.6 million viewers (5.1, 8), NBC had 7.3 million (4.6, 7), ABC had 6.5 million (4.0, 6), the CW had 1.6 million (1.1, 2) and ION Television had 1.2 million (0.8, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a 3.4 million average in prime time (1.7, 3), Telemundo had 1.3 million (0.7, 1), TeleFutura had 630,000 (0.3, 1), Estrella had 260,000 (0.1, 0) and Azteca had 240,000 (also 0.1, 0).

NBC’s “Nightly News’’ topped the evening newscasts with an average of 9.7 million viewers (6.4, 12). ABC’s “World News’’ was second with 8.1 million (5.4, 10), and the “CBS Evening News’’ had 6.6 million viewers (4.5, 8).

For the week of Nov. 28 to Dec. 4, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “The OT,’’ Fox, 19.39 million; NFL Football: Detroit at New Orleans, NBC, 18.9 million; “Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick,’’ NBC, 14.79 million; “NCIS,’’ CBS, 13.37 million; “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer,’’ CBS, 12.64 million; “60 Minutes,’’ CBS, 11.88 million; “Football Night in America,’’ NBC, 11.21 million; “Blue Bloods,’’ CBS, 11.052 million; “Survivor: South Pacific,’’ CBS, 11.047 million; “The X-Factor’’ (Wednesday), Fox, 11.045 million.

––

ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox is a unit of News Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V.

––

Online:

http://www.nielsen.com