Television Ratings

The Nielsen Co. list of prime-time television ratings that normally appears on Wednesdays is delayed this week because of the Thanksgiving holiday. It will be published in Calendar later this week.

LAS VEGAS -- Dana White was upset and wanted to make something clear. Last Friday night, as White attempted to lounge inside his office building where cable network FX films live fights for the Ultimate Fighting Championship's reality show, "The Ultimate Fighter," he wanted to return to the topic of mixed-martial-arts journalism. As president and chief promoter of the UFC, White seeks as much attention as possible for his organization, but occasionally — if not often — he is chafed by the accuracy of online reporting by MMA writers.

Network Averages The number of viewers (in millions) that each network averaged per hour of primetime, for last week and for the season. Network Current Week Season To Date ABC 12.09 8.7 Fox 11.26 10.1 CBS 10.37 12.12 NBC 6.42 9.12 UNI 3.78 3.55 Program Rankings The number of viewers (in millions)

Whenever the Yankees don't make the World Series and, hey, it happens, those who pay attention to baseball's television ratings have a sort of doomsday feeling, as if the entire world will all be watching "Dancing With the Stars" or any NFL game instead. And it's true. The Yankees get the ratings. In 2009, when the Yankees played the Phillies, the World Series averaged over 19 million viewers for the six-game series including just over 22 million viewers for the final game.

The first full week of Winter Olympics coverage gave NBC its most-watched week since the 2008 Summer Olympics and its widest margin of victory in the prime-time ratings race during the official television season since the 2002 Winter Olympics. With the Winter Olympics accounting for seven of the week's 10 most-watched programs, NBC averaged 24.75 million viewers for its prime-time programming between Feb. 15 and Sunday. Fox Broadcasting was second, averaging 8.68 million viewers, according to figures released Tuesday by the Nielsen Co. NBC averaged 26 million viewers for the first 10 nights of Vancouver, Canada, Olympics coverage through Sunday, 27% more than the 20.4 million average for the 2006 Winter Games, which were held in Turin, Italy.

CBS combined the most-watched Grammy telecast since 2004 with the week's two most-watched scripted programs for its 16th ratings victory in the season's 19 weeks. CBS averaged 12.02 million viewers for its prime-time programming between Jan. 25 and Sunday, according to figures released Tuesday by the Nielsen Co. CBS' coverage of Sunday's Grammy Awards ceremony was the week's most-watched program, averaging 25.87 million viewers, its largest audience since the 2004 ceremony, which averaged 26.29 million viewers.

Tuesday's swearing-in of President Obama was the most-watched inaugural event at least since Ronald Reagan took office a generation ago, with tens of millions watching on live television and online. More than 29% of the TV households in the top 56 markets -- which covers roughly 70% of the country -- saw at least some coverage from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on a total of 16 broadcast and cable networks, according to early estimates from Nielsen Media Research. (Nationwide, Nielsen counts 114.

"If you can put a number on it," Arthur C. Nielsen Jr. said his father once told him, "then you know something. " It was a lesson the younger Nielsen — who died Monday at age 92 — never forgot. His lifelong efforts remade his father's once-obscure Chicago market research firm into a sprawling, worldwide measurement giant with a brand name that, in the U.S. at least, became a household synonym for television ratings. Today — even after his company has undergone ownership changes, not to mention weathered near-continuous industry complaints of supposedly flawed methodology — TV executives still arise before dawn to check out the Nielsens, foretelling the fate of their shows and their careers with each ratings point.

The dinosaurs may have roamed in prime time, but Ashton Kutcher's roar was louder. Fox's dino-epic "Terra Nova" got off to a decent if unspectacular start Monday night, proving no match for CBS' "Two and a Half Men," which remained strong in Week 2 with new costar Kutcher. The heavily publicized two-hour premiere of "Terra Nova," the long-anticipated time-travel drama from executive producer Steven Spielberg and already one of the most expensive series in TV history, averaged 9.2 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

Four of the top five most-viewed women's sporting events happened at the Olympics, and the other one is the 1999 Women's World Cup final at the Rose Bowl. What this tells us, said Daniel Szew, who is president of LA Sports Management and before that worked for the Wasserman Group and AEG, is that many viewers of women's sports get invested in a big event in which they get a chance to be patriotic. "I was born in Argentina and moved to the U.S. when I was 5," he said. "My feelings about this are born of my background.

The media circus came to town, this time not in Los Angeles but in Orlando, Fla. In a case compared to the courtroom dramas of O.J. Simpson and the Menendez brothers, the trial of Casey Anthony -- if there were any doubts before -- became a full-fledged national legal spectacle Tuesday after outrage erupted over the jury's decision to acquit the young mother on charges she killed her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, with chloroform and duct tape....

First in a series Is a sequel in store for Ricky Bobby? NASCAR stock-car racing might well have reached its apex on a July night in 2006, not at a superspeedway but at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. It was the movie premiere of "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby," a comedy producers had greenlighted after hearing a pitch of only six words: "Will Ferrell as a NASCAR driver. " Hollywood loves the hottest trends, and few burned brighter then than NASCAR.

ABC's Oscar telecast Sunday was supposed to ride a wave of popular resurgence for award shows. But it looks as if viewers didn't get that message. Countering a trend toward higher ratings earlier this year for the Golden Globes, the Grammys and other awards, the critically scorned 83rd Academy Awards rounded up just 37.6 million total viewers, slumping 10% compared with last year, according to the Nielsen Co. Worse, the Oscars also tumbled in the key category of adults ages 18 to 49, despite the youngest hosting combo in history with actors James Franco, 32, and Anne Hathaway, 28. The three-hour-plus show delivered an 11.7 rating, for an 11% drop in that advertiser-friendly category.

This is not an easy day for Martha Stewart. Sitting in her Manhattan office, surrounded by sparkling walls of ribbons, puff-paints, glitters and decorative hole punches, all carefully arranged by color and size, she has a very serious look on her face, which has been freshly repowdered after a midday yoga session. FOR THE RECORD: Martha Stewart: A Dec. 5 Calendar article about Martha Stewart reported that her jail time cost her company $1 billion. That figure is not an annual financial loss for the publicly traded Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. but an estimate from Stewart based on possible damage to her brand name and loss of future business deals.

TNT set ratings records for its season-opening NBA doubleheader Tuesday, which kicked off with the Boston Celtics beating the LeBron James -led Miami Heat, followed by the Kobe Bryant -led Lakers' game against the Houston Rockets, which included the defending champions' ring ceremony. The Heat-Celtics matchup was the most-watched regular-season NBA game in cable history, and the doubleheader was the most-watched opening doubleheader in Turner's 27 years of broadcasting the NBA. The night's games together averaged 5.4 million viewers, according to the Nielsen ratings, while the Heat and the Celtics averaged 7.43 million.