My 38.9 Million Fellow Americans . . .

Viewers flocked to Republicans and rich kids last week, but vampires did not fare so well. We're sure that's pregnant with meaning -- we'll get back to you on that.

Here's a look at the week's nominees and also-rans:

WINNERS

Palin/McCain. Turns out GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain doesn't have to do better than name Tina Fey his vice presidential choice if he wants his acceptance speech to attract even more viewers than Sen. Barack Obama's. One week after the Democratic nominee's speech clocked 38.4 million viewers across multiple broadcast and cable nets -- breaking the record for most watched convention acceptance speech -- McCain eclipsed him by attracting 38.9 million. And Obama got a run for his money when Fey, er, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, clocked 37 million viewers with her speech to the GOP confab.

Fox News Channel. The cable news net's coverage of McCain's speech clocked 9.2 million viewers one night after it logged 9.04 million for Palin's speech. Both telecasts landed in the weekly top 10 programs and are FNC's third- and fourth-highest-rated ever. Fueled by Republican National Convention coverage, FNC averaged 4.2 million prime-time viewers for the week, beating broadcaster ABC.

"90210." CW's redo of Fox's classic soap scored the week's No. 1 ranking among 18-to-34-year-old chicks, the net's target audience. The Zip code, coupled with season debuts of "One Tree Hill," "Gossip Girl" and "Top Model," catapulted CW to No. 1 among all broadcasters for the week with those 18-34 women -- a rare win in any niche for the network.

MTV's Video Music Awards. The cheesetastic Russell Brand-hosted trophy show snagged an average of 8.4 million viewers, to finish right behind FNC's McCain and Palin speech numbers for the week -- and up dramatically from last year's VMA crowd of 7.1 mil.

"Raising the Bar." An average of 7.7 million tuned in for the premiere of Steven Bochco's TNT lawyer drama, making it the biggest series-opening audience in ad-supported cable history.

LOSERS

"True Blood." HBO's vampire drama started slowly Sunday, averaging 1.4 million viewers at 9 in its first telecast. (A repeat at 10:30 logged 672,000 more.) While this is certainly better than last year's unveiling of HBO's "Tell Me You Love Me," which attracted 910,000 viewers in its premiere, it's nowhere near the 4.6 million who watched the opening of "Big Love" in March 2006 or the first telecast of "John From Cincinnati," which HBO perpetrated on an unsuspecting 3 million-plus in the summer of '07.

(In fairness, "John" enjoyed a "Sopranos" lead-in audience of nearly 12 million, while someone at HBO decided the best lead-in for "True Blood" would be a one-hour promo for "True Blood." And of course, viewers do a lot more DVR'ing these days, HBO telecasts episodes multiple times across a week, blah, blah, blah.)

ABC. Saddled with a last-minute, low-rated Hurricane Gustav special Monday at 10, a last-minute scrapping of a NASCAR race (due to weather) Saturday, and a low-rated end-of-summer "America United: Support the Troops" Sunday special, as well as a lineup riddled with repeats against originals on Fox, NBC and CW, ABC finished sixth in prime time for the week, behind not only NBC, CBS and Fox but also FNC and Univision.

The week's 10 most watched programs, in order, were NBC's Sunday night football, Thursday NFL special, Monday "Deal or No Deal," and Tuesday and Wednesday "America's Got Talent"; CBS's "60 Minutes"; Fox's "Bones"; Fox News Channel's Thursday coverage of McCain's acceptance speech and Wednesday coverage of Palin's acceptance speech; and NBC's coverage of McCain's speech.