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With no first-run episodes of any of the season's six most- watched programs, CBS' "NCIS" emerged as the week's most-watched program for the first time in its four-season history, according to figures released Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research.
Topped by the 17.39 million viewers for "NCIS," CBS had six of the eight most-watched programs between Dec. 11 and Sunday to extend its streak of being the most-watched network each week of the season to 13 weeks.
CBS averaged 12.27 million viewers for its prime-time programming, while NBC was second with 9.1 million, followed by Fox with 7.35 million, ABC with 7.23 million and the CW with 2.52 million.
Sunday's two-hour finale of CBS' "Survivor: Cook Islands" drew 16.42 million viewers to rank No. 3 for the week. But it was the lowest among the 13 "Survivor" finales.
ESPN's "Monday Night Football" was in its customary place atop cable programs, with the Dec. 11 game between the Chicago Bears and St. Louis Rams drawing 11.18 million viewers, which would have put it 20th among the programs on the five major broadcast networks.
A pair of World Wrestling Entertainment professional wrestling programs finished second and third for the week among cable programs, enabling USA to be the week's most-watched cable channel in prime time, averaging 2.55 million viewers.
The "NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams" finished first in the weekly ratings among the three nightly network newscasts for the 13th consecutive week and 124th time in the last 128 weeks with 9.02 million viewers. "ABC's World News With Charles Gibson" was second with 8.45 million, while the "CBS Evening News With Katie Couric" was in third place for the 12th consecutive week with 7.47 million viewers.
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Here are the rankings for national prime-time network television last week (Dec. 11-17) as compiled by Nielsen Media Research. They are based on the average number of people who watched a program from start to finish. Nielsen estimates there are...