Nostalgic viewers turn out for housewives' exit

NEW YORK (AP) ? For one last time, a crowd turned out to watch the goings-on on Wisteria Lane.

ABC's "Desperate Housewives" drew a little more than 11 million viewers for the two-hour series finale of creator Marc Cherry's prime-time soap. That wasn't enough to land it back in the Nielsen company's list of top 10 shows for the week, where it was a regular in its early years, but it was nearly three million more viewers than usually watched this season.

The primary characters were all seen moving away from the cul-de-sac they called home in that final episode.

With the TV season winding down, "NCIS" held to its standard of the most-watched prime-time program of the week, Nielsen said.

CBS comfortably won the week with an average prime-time viewership of 10 million (6.3 rating, 11 share). ABC had 7.9 million (5.1, 9), Fox had 7.3 million (4.5, 8), NBC had 5.6 million (3.6, 6), the CW had 1.2 million (0.8, 1) and ION Television had 1.1 million (0.7, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a 3.6 million prime-time average (1.9, 3), Telemundo had 1.1 million (0.6, 1), TeleFutura had 620,000 (0.3, 1), Estrella had 250,000 and Azteca had 110,000 (both 0.1, 0).

NBC's "Nightly News" topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.9 million viewers (5.4, 11). ABC's "World News" was second with 7.4 million (4.9, 10) and the "CBS Evening News" had 5.7 million viewers (4, 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 May 7-13, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: "NCIS," CBS, 18.2 million; "American Idol" (Wednesday), Fox, 16.46 million; "Dancing With the Stars," ABC, 16.37 million; "American Idol" (Thursday), Fox, 15.62 million; "NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS, 14.56 million; "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 13.72 million; "Dancing With the Stars Results," ABC, 13.71 million; "Person of Interest," CBS, 12.96 million; "The Mentalist," CBS, 12.62 million; "Castle," ABC, 12.36 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

Associated Press

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