Ratings: CBS comedies win the night; Charlie Brown still delivers

Laughs were the big winner last night as CBS’s lineup won the evening in total viewers, according to overnight preliminary ratings. Big Bang Theory, which has been on a roll as of late, shot to its highest numbers ever with 10.8 million viewers. How I Met Your Mother‘s 10.5 million was that show’s biggest tune-in since last March’s much-hyped Britney Spears appearance. At 9 p.m., Two and a Half Men hit a high of 15.7 million (its best since February 2007) and at 9:30 p.m., Worst Week nabbed a solid 10.6 million viewers.

On ABC, everyone’s favorite prematurely balding kid proved once again that he’s a holiday ratings star. A Charlie Brown Christmas won the 8 p.m. hour in total viewers with 11.4 million. The other big event of the night was ABC’s two-hour season finale of Boston Legal, which averaged 10.2 million viewers, a fine number, though not exactly a whopper of a good-bye.

NBC’s Chuck dipped a tad from last week’s numbers, down 300,000 viewers to 7 million. Heroes was also down a slight 200,000 from its previous airing to this week’s 7.8 million. And then to the really bad news: My Own Worst Enemy (Can’t they just take this off the air and end the embarrassment?) averaged only 4 million viewers. When you look at that number, it’s hard not to believe that Jay Leno’s new 10 p.m. show will be able to get a bigger audience.

Fox’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles dropped from last week’s 5.9 million, down to 5.2 million. And Prison Break didn’t do much better with only 5.4 million, down from the previous week’s 5.8 million.

The CW’s Gossip Girl said good-bye to Bart Bass with 3 million viewers, while the struggling Privileged (Watch it! It’s a good show, really!) lost about 37 percent of GG‘s audience with only 1.9 million viewers.

More TV News:

Gossip Girl recap

Boston Legal finale recap

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