Trump Fumbles, but NBC Still Wins

Rosie O'Donnell is going to love this.

"The Apprentice," NBC's Donald Trump-hosted reality competition, had its least-watched premiere ever Sunday night as it opened its sixth season. The show, which for the first time is taking place in Los Angeles instead of Manhattan, drew 9.1 million viewers, about 600,000 fewer than last year's premiere.

O'Donnell and Trump have been engaging in some nasty name-calling over the past few weeks in a dispute that stemmed from O'Donnell's criticism of him on her ABC show, "The View," for giving misbehaving Miss USA Tara Conner a chance to redeem herself. On Monday's "View," O'Donnell called Trump a "comb-over bunny," which is comparatively mild to Trump's characterization of O'Donnell as an "animal" and a "fat slob."

Despite the low numbers for Trump, NBC squeaked out a victory in the Nielsen ratings race, the first weekly non-Olympics win for the network (during the regular TV season) since "Friends" went off the air in 2004.

The victory was assured by Saturday night's NFL wild-card playoff game that saw the Dallas Cowboys fall to the Seattle Seahawks 21-20 after a botched Cowboy field goal attempt. The game scored 26.8 million viewers, the highest audience ever for a prime-time wild-card game.

Elsewhere for NBC, the new reality show "Grease: You're the One That I Want" debuted to a decent 11.5 million viewers Sunday night, marking NBC's highest non-sports-related Sunday night in three years. Still, the show fell behind ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and CBS's "Cold Case" airing in the same time slot.

CBS finished just 70,000 viewers behind NBC for the week. "CSI," which featured Gil Grissom leaving the lab for a teaching sabbatical (in real life, actor William L. Petersen is doing some theater work in Rhode Island), had its biggest audience of the season Thursday with 26.1 million viewers.

Fox was also competitive in the Nielsen race this week with three college bowl games that all topped the 10 million mark. Last Wednesday's Sugar Bowl, which saw LSU trounce Notre Dame 41-14, was Fox's top-performing game, with an audience of 14.4 million. (But it was no match for Monday night's Florida upset over Ohio State in the BCS title game that drew 28.8 million for Fox).

New ABC sitcoms "Knights of Prosperity" and "In Case of Emergency" tallied ho-hum ratings on Wednesday against some stiff competition. "Knights" drew 7.2 million, actually losing 100,000 viewers from its "According to Jim" lead-in, while "Emergency" dropped to 6.3 million. Both placed fourth in the time slot.

The week's 10 most watched programs, in order, were: NBC's Saturday night NFC wild-card game; CBS's "CSI"; ABC's "Desperate Housewives"; NBC's "Law & Order: SVU"; Fox's Sugar Bowl; CBS's "Shark," "Without a Trace" and "Cold Case"; Fox's Fiesta Bowl; and ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."