Pelley's muscle a Nielsen's Top 10

By DAVID BAUDER

NEW YORK (AP) — Studly men flexing their muscles in sweaty shirts dominated Nielsen's Top 10 list of popular programming. And there was football, too.

CBS' "60 Minutes" finished as the week's eighth most-watched program, featuring top network anchor Scott Pelley's interview with actor Hugh Jackman. Pelley joined Jackman in a workout, pumping iron and revealing muscles usually hidden underneath a conservative suit when he anchors the "CBS Evening News."

As is typical in the fall, NBC's "Sunday Night Football" matchup, most recently featuring Green Bay's comeback win against the Detroit Lions, was the top show in the ratings.

CBS has had great success with its Grammy Awards telecast in recent years but its attempt to expand the franchise with a performance-driven show announcing the nominees didn't do as well. The nomination show was ranked No. 54 for the week with 5.4 million viewers.

CBS' Tuesday schedule oddly paired the kids' classic "Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer" and the adult classic "Victoria's Secret Fashion Show." This year the youngsters won, with "Rudolph" getting 10.1 million viewers and the lingerie-clad women getting 9.5 million.

ABC had no programs in Nielsen's top 20.

CBS won the week with a prime-time average of 9.4 million viewers (5.9 rating, 8 share). Resurgent NBC was second with 7.8 million (4.8, 8), and won among the 18-to-49-year-old viewership it most actively seeks. Fox had 6.1 million and ABC had 5.7 million (both 3.7, 6), the CW had 1.6 million (1.1, 2) and ION Television had 1.1 million (0.8, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with an average of 3.9 million (2.0, 3), Telemundo had 1.5 million (0.8, 1), TeleFutura had 550,000 (0.3, 1), Estrella had 200,000 and Azteca 100,000 (both 0.1, 0).

NBC's "Nightly News" topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8.9 million viewers (6.0, 11). ABC's "World News" was second with 7.9 million (5.4, 11) and the "CBS Evening News" had 6.5 million viewers (4.5, 8).

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.

For the week of Dec. 3-9, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: Sunday Night Football: Detroit at Green Bay, NBC, 21.36 million; "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 16.95 million; "Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick," NBC, 16.44 million; "Person of Interest," CBS, 14.18 million; "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 13.5 million; "Football Night in America," NBC, 12.12 million; "The Voice" (Monday), NBC, 12.11 million; "60 Minutes," CBS, 11.87 million; "The Voice" (Tuesday), NBC, 11.52 million; "The OT," Fox, 11.45 million.

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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 and My Network TV are units 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.

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Online:

http://www.nielsen.com