We Feel Those Ratings Kicking: Suddenly, Millions Wanted to Catch a Glimpse of 'Zoey'

LOSERS

Bowl Games. The week-long bowl-fest produced surprisingly lackluster numbers, starting with Tuesday's Rose Bowl, which snared 19 million viewers, its smallest audience since '03. Tuesday's [insurance company] Sugar Bowl copped 11.7 million viewers, its tiniest haul since '95. Wednesday's [snack chip] Fiesta Bowl bagged 12.2 million fans to tie its '05 game for puniest crowd since '97. And Thursday's [package deliverer] Orange Bowl scored just under 12 million viewers, its second smallest audience since '99.

"The Wire." The fifth and final season debut of HBO's critically acclaimed drama suffered its smallest Sunday premiere audience ever, 1.2 million viewers.

The week's 10 most watched prime-time programs, in order, were: NBC's Sunday NFL playoff game; ABC's "Desperate Housewives" and Rose Bowl coverage; CBS's "60 Minutes"; NBC's "Law & Order" and Thursday "Deal or No Deal"; CBS's "CSI"; ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition"; and NBC's Law & Order: SVU" and Wednesday "Deal or No Deal."

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More writers' strike fallout for NBC's broadcast of "The Golden Globes," which is now, more correctly, NBC's "Golden Globes" news conference:

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which bestows Globes on movie and TV luminaries, says Steven Spielberg will not receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement this year. There goes another 10 minutes of NBC's planned one-hour "press conference" coverage of the Globe trophy ceremony.

The HFPA says it will fete Spielberg next January, when, the HFPA optimistically believes, the Hollywood writers' strike will be a distant memory.

Late Monday, NBC announced it was forced to slash its annual three-hour Globe orgy of celebrity sightings down to a one-hour affair covered by NBC News because Hollywood writers had announced their intention to picket the show, which, in turn, had sent the Screen Actors Guild to canvass its members to make sure they felt as the guild did that it would be unseemly to step over the writers to accept trophies and gift baskets at the Hilton in Beverly Hills this Sunday.

Before NBC announced that the Globes had been turned into a news conference, NBC Entertainment co-chief Ben Silverman had taken his customary high road, telling E! News anchor Ryan Seacrest that while "sadly, it feels like the nerdiest, ugliest, meanest kids in the high school are trying to cancel the prom . . . NBC wants to try to keep that prom alive."