AP Entertainment

In a week dominated by reruns and holiday distractions, CBS maintained its winning ways, beating second-place Fox by nearly 2 million viewers.CBS has won every week but one in the current TV season.Meanwhile, the massive Northeastern snowstorm denied NBC its usual Sunday prime-time powerhouse with the cancellation of the Philadelphia Eagles-Minnesota Vikings game. It was rescheduled for Tuesday, airing too late to help NBC in last week's Nielsen ratings report. NBC, ranked third in viewers...Read Full Story

It was a big week in TV ratings for "Dancing With the Stars" and the Palin family.Just a few days after the last two episodes of "Dancing With the Stars" became the most-watched entertainment shows of the TV season with Bristol's unexpected placement in the finals, mom Sarah Palin's reality series got a boost.The Nielsen Co. said Tuesday that "Sarah Palin's Alaska" on the Discovery Channel had a half-million more viewers Sunday than it had the previous week. The attention paid to Bristol...Read Full Story

It only seems like ABC and Fox were impersonating cable networks last week.The two broadcasters had a depressing week in the Nielsen Co.'s ratings report. Combined, their average viewership in prime time didn't match what top-rated CBS had. CBS has won every week but one in the current TV season, Nielsen said.The most-watched show on ABC last week was the movie "The Santa Clause 3," with 6.4 million viewers. It ranked No. 31 on Nielsen's list, behind 18 programs broadcast on CBS.Fox's most...Read Full Story

Take pro football out of the mix, and NBC's ratings problems are glaring.The NFL's Sunday night shootout between the New England Patriots and the Pittsburgh Steelers was seen by nearly 21.2 million people on NBC, the only prime-time program to top 20 million viewers last week, the Nielsen Co. said.NBC's fall from there was steep. Rivals CBS, ABC and Fox had a total of 28 scripted shows that were seen by more people than the top scripted entertainment program on NBC — "Law & Order: SVU," with...Read Full Story

Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by the Nielsen Co. for Dec. 20-26. Listings include the week's ranking and viewership.1. "NCIS," CBS, 12.25 million.2. "The OT," Fox, 11.86 million.3. "60 Minutes," CBS, 11.53 million.4. "NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS, 11.28 million.5. "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 9.22 million.6. "The Sing Off," NBC, 8.61 million.7. "Undercover Boss," CBS, 8.38 million.8. "The Mentalist," CBS, 7.96 million.9. "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 7.93 million.10. "Hawaii Five-O," CBS, 7...Read Full Story

Five years after it premiered, Willy Decker's minimalist version of Verdi's "La Traviata" still has the power to shock.And the shock begins before the curtain goes up. In fact, there is no curtain at all in the staging that opened at the Metropolitan Opera on New Year's Eve.Greeting the audience is a nearly bare stage, surrounded by a curved, grayish-white wall with a black oval opening at the top. A huge clock sits to one side next to Doctor Grenvil, a minor character to whom the German...Read Full Story

German tenor Peter Hofmann, who became famous for his performances of Richard Wagner operas, died Tuesday. He was 66.The Rheinische Post newspaper quoted his brother Fritz Hofmann saying he died at a hospital in Wunsiedel in Bavaria. The mass-circulation newspaper Bild also reported Hofmann's death after a long battle with Parkinson's disease."Peter Hofmann, unlike few others, bridged the gap between entertainment and serious music," Culture Minister Bernd Neumann said in a statement. "His...Read Full Story

Zombies, red-nosed reindeers and some veteran TV news reporters had a memorable week in the television ratings.AMC's season finale of "The Walking Dead," the TV version of a comic book zombie series, scored the biggest audience ever for a basic cable drama series in the key young demographic of viewers aged 18-to-49-years-old, the Nielsen Co. said on Tuesday.Six million people overall watched the final episode in its first airing Sunday night. Add in two later repeats that night, and the...Read Full Story

The Toledo Symphony has found it takes more than practice to get to Carnegie Hall.City officials voted against a proposal to give the musicians $10,000 to help cover the cost of a trip to perform in New York City.Despite the setback, Kathy Carroll, the symphony's president, said they'll still make the trip and find the money from another source."Life goes on and we will still be at Carnegie Hall and we intend to make the city proud," she told The Blade. "We will continue to seek funds for the...Read Full Story

Add Simon Rattle to the list of eminent conductors who have made belated debuts at the Metropolitan Opera.The British maestro, his trademark mop of frizzy white hair bobbing enthusiastically above the orchestra pit, led the company in a revival of Debussy's "Pelleas et Melisande" on Friday night.Setting an unusually leisurely pace that stretched the performance, including intermissions, to more than four hours, Rattle drew some magnificent playing from the orchestra. The crystalline textures...Read Full Story