Prime Time Preliminary Tuesday Ratings

Repeats of Fox's "House" and "Fringe" and CBS' "NCIS" and "The Mentalist" gave the networks a first-place tie Tuesday night. Both Fox shows were down four-tenths of a point from last week's performance, but it was CBS' "Home for the Holidays" special that brought down the network's average for the night, even though the special was up 38% from last year. A night of "Law & Order" and "Law & Order: SVU" repeats gave NBC third place, while seasonal fare on ABC gave the network fourth. The CW placed fifth with its night of repeats.

	8	8:30	9	9:30	10	10:30
1.5 / 5	Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas 2.3 / 7 6.5 mil		Rediscovered 1.3 / 4 4.6 mil		The List 0.9 / 3 2.9 mil
1.8 / 5	10th Annual A Home for the Holidays 1.1 / 4 6.5 mil		NCIS 2.1 / 6 10.6 mil		The Mentalist 2.1 / 6 10.8 mil
1.8 / 6	House 2.1 / 7 6.7 mil		Fringe 1.5 / 5 4.3 mil		No Programming
1.6 / 5	Law & Order 1.3 / 4 6.1 mil		Law & Order: SVU 1.6 / 5 6 mil		Law & Order: SVU 2.0 / 6 7 mil
0.5 / 1	90210 0.4 / 1 1.2 mil		Privileged 0.5 / 1 1.2 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.