Eli Manning played in one of the early NBC football games. (Bill Kostroun - AP) Two days after CBS proclaimed its prime-time drama “NCIS” to be the season’s No. 1 program for the first time, NBC Sports announced that its “Sunday Night Football” was, once again, prime-time television’s No. 1 program.

Those seemingly contradictory claims can be made because of the kind of Nielsen rannygazoo that causes The Reporters Who Cover Television to look upon the end of the TV season with smoldering eyes and silent shudders.

When CBS claims that its crime procedural “NCIS” was the most-watched program, what the network means is that during the TV season — which began Sept. 24 and ended Wednesday night — “NCIS” had the most viewers on average: 21.3 million of them.

One of the more priceless exchanges of this week’s Oklahoma City tornado news coverage happened about 5:35 p.m. Tuesday.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was interviewing a young woman named Rebecca, whose husband was traveling when the tornado hit, and who was prepared to ride out the tornado with her 19-month-old son Anders.

Rebecca, who’s from Louisiana, explained that all her Oklahoma-native neighbors and her husband told her to stay in the house because “it never hits anybody.” On Monday, she and Anders grabbed a mattress and got in the tub, watched on a laptop as the tornado approached — then, she said, “I just panicked.”

Now that Nielsen numbers for last week are finally out, and with the TV season almost over (it officially ends Wednesday night), CBS officially pronounced itself the winner Tuesday, snagging the biggest prime-time audience for the 10th time in the past 11 seasons.

CBS had a hefty 4 million-viewer lead over its closest competitor this season — the largest margin of any network in 24 years.

The network also claimed its first win in 21 years among the 18- to 49-year-old viewers who are the currency of broadcast-TV ad sales.

Kelly Rowland (Jeff Bottari - GETTY IMAGES) Former Destiny’s Child member Kelly Rowland, and Mexican singer/actress Paulina Rubio have joined Fox’s singing competition “The X Factor” as judge/mentors, the network announced late Monday.

 They’re replacing LA Reid and Britney Spears.

Brit and Demi Lovato were added last season, in hopes of jump-starting the show’s ratings, after the first season clocked half as many viewers as creator Simon Cowell had promised.

But last season’s numbers weren’t too hot either and, after last season wrapped, both Brit and Reid announced they had discovered they were too busy to return.

Ang Lee (Pascal Le Segretain - GETTY IMAGES) Remember back in March, when FX announced Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee was going to make his TV directorial debut on the pilot for FX’s new drama series “Tyrant”?

 Never mind.

 Lee has backed out of the project, which would have been his first since “Life of Pi,” for which he won this year’s best-director Academy Award.

 “Tyrant,” about an Arab state dictator who dies, leaving his American son to head the country, was created by Gideon Raff (“Homeland”), whose Israeli series “Prisoners of War” was the source material for “Homeland.”