Young viewers give high ratings to Fox's 'House'
By DAVID BAUDER, Associated Press
Published April 14, 2006

NEW YORK - With a little help from Simon Cowell and the gang, House last week drew the highest ratings among young viewers of any Fox scripted series since Ally McBeal six years ago.

Hugh Laurie's Dr. Gregory House and his co-stars on the medical drama have had improved ratings four weeks in a row, according to Nielsen Media Research. Like last season, House is being helped immensely by airing directly after television's most popular show, American Idol. Still, last week's episode had strong retention rates: American Idol was seen by 28.8-million viewers, with 22.7-million staying on to watch House.Overall, CBS won the week, averaging 12.4-million viewers in prime time. Fox had 9.9-million and NBC 9.3-million. ABC, without first-run episodes of Grey's Anatomy or Desperate Housewives, sunk to 8.1-million viewers. The WB and UPN had identical averages of 2.9-million. Pax TV had 450,000.

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision averaged 3.5-million viewers, Telemundo had 790,000 and TeleFutura had 560,000 .

NBC's Nightly News won the evening news ratings race, averaging 8.4-million viewers. ABC's World News Tonight had 7.8-million and the CBS Evening News had 6.9-million.

1. Idol-Tue., Fox, 28.8

2. Idol-Wed., Fox, 26.2

3. CSI, CBS, 23.3

4. House, Fox, 22.7

5. Deal Or No-Mon., NBC, 17.7