NEW YORK (AP) – Powered by a classic Rose Bowl battle between Texas and Southern California that was the most-watched college football game in at least 15 years, ABC broke CBS’ ratings dominance this TV season.

Texas’ last-minute 41-38 win in college football’s national championship was seen by 35.6 million people last week, according to Nielsen Media Research.

No college football game has drawn that much interest since at least 1991, as far back as Nielsen has electronic records. It was a whopping 14.2 million more viewers than last year’s championship game between Southern California and Oklahoma, and a bigger audience than any World Series game since 2001.

Strong ratings performances in the Fiesta and Orange Bowls likely had Fox smiling as much as ABC: the rights to telecast many of the big-time bowls move to Fox next season.

In a different kind of competition, ABC was buoyed by the return of “Dancing With the Stars,” which was seen by 17.5 million people for the debut of its second season.

Until last week, CBS had won every week of the television season in the ratings.

“The Book of Daniel,” NBC’s highly-touted series about an Episcopal priest with a gay son that was yanked from the air by a handful of affiliates due to content concerns, had a disappointing bow with 9 million viewers on Friday.

NBC’s reboot of its Thursday lineup was overshadowed by ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” as “Four Kings” debuted to 8.9 million viewers. Fans sought out “My Name is Earl” in strong numbers (11.2 million) with its move to Thursdays, however.

ABC averaged 19.1 million viewers in prime-time last week (12.0 rating, 19 share), CBS had 13.1 million viewers (8.6, 13), NBC had 9.2 million (6.1, 9), Fox had 6.1 million (3.8, 6), Univision had 3.7 million (1.8, 3), UPN had 2.9 million (2.0, 3), the WB had 2.4 million (1.7, 3) and Pax TV had 490,000 (0.4, 1).

NBC’s “Nightly News” dominated the evening news ratings during the debut week of ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff. NBC averaged 11 million viewers (7.5 rating, 13 share), ABC’s “World News Tonight” had 9 million (6.4, 12) and the “CBS Evening News” had 8.7 million (6.0, 11). Only Thursday’s and Friday’s ratings were measured for ABC because bowl games pre-empted the news for many West Coast viewers.

A ratings point represents 1,102,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 110.2 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Jan. 2-8, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “Rose Bowl: Southern California vs. Texas,” ABC, 35.63 million; “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 27.23 million; “Rose Bowl Pre Game,” ABC, 24.53 million; “Desperate Housewives,” ABC, 23.71 million; “NFL Football: Jacksonville at New England,” ABC, 22.55 million; “NFL Postgame Show” (Sunday), CBS, 22.3 million; “NFL Playoffs Pregame Show,” ABC, 22.01 million; “Without a Trace,” CBS, 20.93 million; “Fiesta Bowl: Notre Dame vs. Ohio State,” ABC, 20.6 million; “Orange Bowl: Penn State vs. Florida State,” ABC, 18.55 million.

—

On the Net:

http://www.nielsenmedia.com

AP-ES-01-10-06 1630EST