‘Survivor’ boosts CBS’ Letterman

CBS’ “Survivor” again has yielded spillover benefits to the network’s late-night and early-morning programs, based on Nielsen Media Research data for the week of the show’s two-hour finale released Monday.

For the period that began Dec. 16, “Late Show With David Letterman” delivered more than 4.9 million viewers on average -- its highest weekly rating since the week ending Sept. 28, 2001 -- while “The Early Show” drew its biggest audience since March.

Despite the boost from “Survivor,” whose winner appeared on “The Early Show,” the struggling program -- which underwent a format overhaul in October -- remained a distant third in its time period.

Similarly, “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” maintained a solid margin over Letterman, averaging 6 million viewers. The NBC program has won all 13 weeks of the new TV season.

The three-hour conclusion to the latest “Survivor” averaged nearly 23 million viewers on Dec. 19 -- over 10 million more than NBC, which ran repeats of its Thursday-night comedies and “ER.” The producers of “Late Show” have long maintained that Leno enjoys an advantage because NBC draws much bigger audiences in the last hour of prime time.

-- Brian Lowry