• by Wayne Friedman , April 4, 2012

NBC’s “The Voice” may look to buck the historical trend of a reality show spinoff out-performing its original, “American Idol,” this season. But when it comes to “results” style shows, everything is the same.

In its first “Voice” results show on Tuesday, the program delivered 22% fewer key viewers than its “performance” show the night before -- coming in at a Nielsen preliminary 3.2 rating/8 share among 18-49 viewers. A two-hour version on Monday night gave “The Voice” a Nielsen final rating of 4.1/11.

Still, the show was way ahead of its nearest rated competitor on this Tuesday -- another “results” show -- ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” which pulled in a 2.7/7.

NBC and ABC tied for the night overall with a 2.2/6. To be fair, CBS’ big “NCIS” franchise, the original show and “NCIS: Los Angeles," were in repeats on the night -- shows that typically own Tuesday for CBS.

Both “The Voice” and “Dancing” put the kibosh on Fox’s strong comedy effort this season. At 9 p.m., the two reality shows went against Fox’s “New Girl” -- which slipped a bit to a season-low 2.3/6. New Fox midseason comedy “Breaking In” at 9:30 was down a bit versus the week before to a 1.3/3.

For the night, Fox was at a 1.6/5 -- good for third place; Univision just a smidge behind at 1.6/4; CBS at a 1.5/4; and CW at a 0.3/1.

Other shows of note came at 10 p.m. where ABC’s “Body of Proof” remained steady with a 2.0/5. NBC’s “Fashion Star” finished with a respectable 1.5/4, also the same numbers versus a week ago. CBS with a rerun of “Unforgettable” grabbed a 1.2/3. 

Final numbers for CBS’ NCAA College Men’s Basketball on Monday pulled in with 20.9 million average viewers, 4% more than in 2011. The entire 67-game NCAA tournament, shared between CBS, and TBS, TNT and TruTV, averaged 9.6 million viewers, down 6% from 10.2 million last year. But this was 1% higher than 2010’s 9.5 million viewers.