Prime Time Preliminary Sunday Ratings

"Desperate Housewives" on ABC soared as the highest-rated show of the night, while Fox claimed first place overall with a sports combination of NFL overrun and Game Three of the National League Championship Series between the Phillies and the Dodgers. Competing against the NLCS on Fox, NBC's NFL game between the Patriots and the Chargers declined slightly by 7% vs. last week's Steelers/Jaguars matchup.

	7	7:30	8	8:30	9	9:30	10	10:30
3.8 / 10	America's Funniest Home Videos 1.9 / 6 6.4 mil		Extreme Makeover: Home Edition 3.7 / 9 11.3 mil		Desperate Housewives 5.9 / 14 15.3 mil		Brothers and Sisters 3.6 / 9 10.1 mil
2.5 / 6	60 Minutes 2.0 / 6 10.5 mil		Amazing Race 13 2.8 / 7 9.2 mil		Cold Case 2.7 / 6 10.9 mil		The Unit 2.6 / 7 9.1 mil
4.0 / 10	NFL Overrun 8.2 / 25 21.8 mil	The OT 7.6 / 22 19.8 mil	NLCS Game 3: Phillies vs. Dodgers 2.8 / n/a 8.5 mil
3.8 / 10	Football Night in America 1.5 / 5 4.4 mil	Football Night in America 2.0 / 6 5.5 mil	Football Night in America 4.0 / 11 10.5 mil	NFL Football: Patriots vs. Chargers 4.5 / 11 11.5 mil
0.3 / 1	In Harm's Way 0.3 / 1 0.7 mil		Valentine 0.4 / 1 1 mil		Easy Money 0.3 / 1 0.8 mil		No Programming

Source: Nielsen Media Research

*Ratings are specified in the 18-to 49-year-old demographic and viewership in P2+.

A note about ratings: Ratings are expressed as percentages of Nielsen's estimated 114.5 million U.S. television households. The first number, the rating, is a percentage of households tuned into a specific program at a specific time.

The second number, the share, is a percentage of households with televisions in use tuned into that same program. For example, if a show obtains a 10.2/16, this means that 10.2% of all U.S. households tuned into the program at some point during the broadcast. Meanwhile, 16% of all households watching television during the time period viewed the program at some point. Ratings are broken down further by demographic, as networks sell advertising time based on the makeup of the audience.