Flavor Flav Of the Week

CBS has won all four weeks of the new season among viewers of all ages, and this week it tied ABC among the younger ones advertisers lust after. And Flavor Flav, making a tough final choice between hotties Delishis and New York on the latest edition of VH1's "Flavor of Love," copped a bigger crowd than the season debut of ABC's "What About Brian" or the premiere of NBC's "Twenty Good Years." It's going to be one of those TV seasons.

Here's a look at the week's tops and bottoms:

WINNERS

Flavor Flav . About 7.5 million viewers tuned in to see Mr. Flav pick Ms. Delishis to be his main, er, squeeze on the second-season finale of "Flavor of Love." It was the biggest audience ever for VH1. (Just under 6 million caught the first-season wrap-up.) Among viewers advertisers love the most -- younger ones -- Flav's Sunday finale clocked the best rating for a non-sports program on any basic cable network this calendar year to date. And, in one of those happy endings we love, Flav's final rejectee, Ms. New York, will get her own spinoff, "Flavorette," in which she will get to stick it to a bunch of men the way Flav has done to so many women over the years on VH1. To recap, the Public Enemy turned VH1 heartbreaker stole Brigitte Nielsen's heart on the third season of "The Surreal Life," after which the crazy-in-love couple starred in the spinoff "Strange Love." That, in turn, begat "Flavor of Love," in which Flav slowly worked his way through a pack of hotties, a show so successful that VH1 ordered another round. And the rest, as they say, is ratings history.

"Brothers & Sisters." ABC gave its new Sunday series a full-season pickup because, while no ratings home run, it's at least doing a better job of hanging on to its enormous "Desperate Housewives" lead-in audience than new time-slot slackers "Six Degrees" and "The Nine" are doing post-"Grey's Anatomy" and "Lost," respectively. "B&S" is the second-highest-rated new series among young viewers, behind NBC's "Heroes," which, we ought to mention, is No. 1 without the benefit of a "Desperate Housewives" lead-in or an all-star cast that includes Calista Flockhart, Rachel Griffiths and Sally Field.

"Heroes." NBC gave "Heroes" a full-season order because it remains the No. 1 new series of the season among the 18-to-49-year-olds advertisers crave. And, among the 18-to-34-year-olds advertisers crave even more, it's the No. 3-ranked series, behind only mega-hits "Grey's Anatomy" and "Desperate Housewives" and tied with "CSI."

"1 vs. 100." NBC's new game show accomplished the impossible: It delivered nearly 13 million viewers to NBC, scoring the network's biggest Friday 9 p.m. premiere in 13 years among young viewers and the best Friday non-sports debut among young viewers on any network in about two years. And it made "Deal or No Deal" look like Mensa brainteasers. Oh, wait. NBC says in this week's edition of "1 vs. 100" a contestant will match wits with actual Mensa members. Never mind.

"Jericho" beat the time-slot debut of "30 Rock" among young viewers; CBS gave the delivering series a full-season pickup.

"Criminal Minds." Just a couple hundred thousand viewers separated this CBS drama from time-slot competitor "Lost" last week -- and by the second half-hour "Criminal Minds" was ahead, though its audience skews older, which means advertisers give it less respect.

LOSERS

"I Pity the Fool." Has time passed Mr. T by? His new TV Land reality series attracted just 628,000 Wednesday at 10, though his lead-in, a "Jeffersons" rerun, averaged 925,000 viewers. Over the prior four weeks, the cable net had averaged 723,000 viewers in T's time slot. And, in March '05, the first episode of TV Land's being-Farrah Fawcett reality series, "Chasing Farrah," lured more than 800,000.

"30 Rock." Tina Fey's much-ballyhooed "Saturday Night Live"-ish comedy series scored just 8.1 million viewers on Wednesday. That's considerably fewer than caught the first episode of NBC's other new "SNL"-ish series, Aaron Sorkin's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," which opened to a crowd of more than 13 million. NBC noted that "30 Rock" aired at 8 while "Studio 60" debuted at 10, when far more homes are using television, and that the network hadn't tried comedy in the "30 Rock" time slot since the Cretaceous Period. Cry me a river. Among young viewers, "30 Rock" finished behind ABC's ballroom dancing in the time slot, and even behind CBS's new sky-is-falling drama, "Jericho."

"Six Degrees." Last week ABC's new strangers-get-connected series hung on to just 38 percent of TV's biggest lead-in audience -- "Grey's Anatomy's" nearly 23 million viewers. And yet -- not canceled.

The week's 10 most watched programs, in order, were: ABC's "Grey's Anatomy"; CBS's "CSI"; ABC's "Desperate Housewives," "Dancing With the Stars" and "Dancing" results show; CBS's "CSI: NY," "CSI: Miami" and "60 Minutes"; ABC's "Lost"; and CBS's "Criminal Minds."