Pure DWTS 2011 – Dancing With The Stars TV Ratings For May 23-29

Below are the new Nielsen TV Ratings for May 23rd-29th. Listings include the week’s ranking and viewership. As you can see, the Dancing With The Stars Results show beat out American Idol’s performance night last week with 22.86 million viewers. However, American Idol’s Finale topped the list with 29.29 million viewers which drew its largest audience since 2008 (a 21-percent increase over last year’s 24.22 million viewers). The two-hour season finale of “Dancing with the Stars” on May 24th was third for the week, averaging 21.42 million viewers, “the second-most for a Spring finale and 16 percent more than the 18.4 million average for last Spring’s finale”. The hour-long final competition program May 23rd finished second, averaging 22.86 million viewers, “the most for a spring final competition program and 18 percent more than last spring’s final competition program”. The combined average for the Spring season of “Dancing with the Stars” and “Dancing with the Stars: The Results Show” was 21.1 million viewers, “the most in series history” according to OCRegister. More listings and ratings below. Note how high the finale show’s for Glee and House are on the list. “So You Think You Can Dance” had a great premiere night placed at 9th with 9.46 million viewers.  (Heidi’s Note: So, Nigel Lithgow has been doing some very creative bragging on Twitter about how AI’s “finale” beat DWTS – he neglected to mention that when the two shows went HEAD TO HEAD, AI loses. Sure, Idol won wednesday night – no competition. I suspected from what I had seen that Nigel was full of crap – nice to see the confirmation in writing. 🙂  Heck, Glee isn’t doing well as  a lead – DWTS re-run isn’t far behind it. No wonder they keep doing that – it’s a smart plan.)

1. “American Idol” (Wednesday), Fox, 29.29 million.

2. “Dancing With the Stars,” ABC, 22.86 million.

3. “Dancing With the Stars Results,” ABC, 21.42 million.

4. “American Idol” (Tuesday), Fox, 20.57 million.

5. “Glee,” Fox, 11.8 million.

6. “Dancing With the Stars” (Tuesday, 8 p.m.), ABC, 10.36 million.

7. “Modern Family,” ABC, 10.31 million.

8. “NCIS,” CBS, 9.83 million.

9. “So You Think You Can Dance” (Thursday), Fox, 9.46 million.

10. “The Mentalist,” CBS, 9.26 million.

11. “House,” Fox, 9.11 million.

12. “The Bachelorette,” ABC, 9.02 million.

13. “NCIS: Los Angeles,” CBS, 8.67 million.

14. “The Voice,” NBC, 8.49 million.

15. “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 8.28 million.

16. “The Biggest Loser 11,” NBC, 8.2 million.

17. Auto Racing: NASCAR Sprint Cup, Fox, 8.13 million.

18. “Two and a Half Men,” CBS, 8.03 million.

19. “NCIS” (Tuesday, 10 p.m.), CBS, 7.91 million.

20. “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 7.74 million.

Sources used for this post: OCRegister, Yahoo