Forget Bristol Palin and The Situation. It's the folks at ABC who are dancing.
The 21 million people who watched Monday's two-hour "Dancing With the Stars" made it the clear winner on the opening night of a new television season, the Nielsen Co. said on Tuesday. After a long, slow summer, CBS and NBC had some good news, too.
The "Dancing With the Stars" debut was up 18 percent over last season's opener, Nielsen said.
Veteran shows usually aren't growing like that at this stage of their career, said Marc Berman, an analyst for Media Week Online. "They put together a very good cast of characters," he said.
CBS' remake of "Hawaii Five-0" dominated in the 10 p.m. hour, with the night's second biggest audience at 13.8 million people. ABC's "Castle" at that hour had a strong showing with 11.2 million people, Nielsen said.
The night's biggest loser -- and we're not talking about excess weight -- was probably Fox's new "Lone Star," which may be on life support after getting only 4.5 million viewers and losing more than half the audience that watched "House" in the time slot before it.
Behind the one-two punch of pro football and "America's Got Talent," NBC won the final week of the summer TV season, averaging 8.9 million viewers (5.5 rating, 10 share).
CBS averaged 8 million viewers last week (5.0 rating, 9 share), ABC had 5.2 million (3.3, 6), Fox had 3.9 million (2.4, 4), the CW had 2.2 million (1.4, 2) and ION television had 1.3 million (0.3, 1).
