• by Wayne Friedman , November 9, 2006

ABC was lead dancer during Tuesday night's election coverage. But as Democrats took over control of the House, Fox won the night--because of "House."

Coming out of its high-rated "Dancing with the Stars," Charles Gibson and ABC News led the other networks with its 9:30 to 11 p.m. election coverage--averaging 10.1 million viewers, and peaking to 12.8 million.

NBC and CBS started up their political coverage at 10 p.m., with NBC averaging 7.2 million viewers that hour, and CBS averaging 7.1 million. In the key news demographic race--the adults 25-54 demographic--NBC and ABC tied with a Nielsen preliminary 2.9 rating for the hour, followed closely by CBS at 2.7.

But Fox was a major winner in the non-prime-time news category, with "House" up nearly 20% since the end of the baseball playoffs--with a 6.8 rating among 18-49 viewers, the night's highest-rated show. That led Fox to win the night with a 4.5 rating/11 share. ABC was second at 4.2/10; then CBS, at 3.3/8; NBC at 2.4/6; Univision at 1.7/4; and the CW at 1.6/4.

ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" started off strong with a 5.4 at 8 p.m.--and then moved higher at 9 p.m. with a 6.2 rating, which was topped only by "House." At 9:30 p.m., the election coverage lost almost half of the "Stars" audience in the 18-49 demographic, coming in with a 3.3.

Some new struggling network shows continue to drop off the pace: NBC's "Friday Night Lights" at 2.5 and Fox's "Standoff" at 2.3. Still, other returning shows were somewhat immune to the political TV coverage, such as CBS's "NCIS," which posted a 4.2--somewhat better than its 3.9 rating outings in recent weeks.