'Dancing' Sweeps Away Thanksgiving Week

· "The Shield." What was promised to be the very last episode of Michael Chiklis's bad cop drama went out limply Tuesday, when just 1.6 million viewers tuned in. More than 2 million watched this season's unveiling and, in its heyday -- that would be its second season -- FX's "Shield" copped as many as 4.4 million viewers. Alarmingly, Chiklis's Vic did not go toes-up in the finale, and at a recent finale screening for The Reporters Who Cover Television, the show creator would not rule out a "Shield" flick -- as if there weren't already enough sadness in the world.

The week's 10 most watched programs, in order, were: ABC's Monday "Dancing With the Stars," ABC's Tuesday "Dancing With the Stars," CBS's "60 Minutes," CBS's "NCIS," CBS's "The Mentalist," NBC's "Sunday Night Football," ABC's "Desperate Housewives," CBS's "Two and a Half Men," CBS's "CSI: Miami" and CBS's "Criminal Minds."

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CBS and ABC unveiled their midseason schedules yesterday.

Their strategy, in a nutshell:

All New Series Launch at 10 p.m. Because Fox Does Not Program 10 p.m. A.k.a. Fox scheduling chief Preston Beckman is a crazy man who, from mid-January through May, uses "American Idol" like a Jedi knight wielding a light saber to pulverize anything in his network's prime-time path.

Heck, CBS is actually launching one new reality series Saturday to keep it out of "Idol's" way.

ABC is launching three new drama series:

· "Castle," about a "wildly famous mystery novelist" who teams up with an NYPD detective when the cops notice a killer is staging murders out of his books. It's airing Mondays at 10, starting March 9.

· "Cupid," ABC's attempt to remake its late-'90s romantic dramedy, which starred Jeremy Piven as a guy who thinks he's the Roman god of love and who must make 100 couples fall in love before he can return to Mount Olympus -- and co-starring show-killer Paula Marshall as his shrink. Now it stars Bobby Cannavale and Sarah Paulson and launches Tuesday, March 24 -- at 10.