George may be creepy, but he helps ‘Housewives’

The demise of creepy pharmacist George on Sunday lifted ABC’s “Desperate Housewives� to the top of the weekly Nielsen Media Research rankings.

Figures released Tuesday showed that CBS continued its overall dominance during Thanksgiving week. It registered five of the seven most-watched programs to become the first network to win each of the first 10 weeks of the season since NBC in 1988.

But “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation� was knocked from its usual perch atop the ratings -- perhaps because it was telecast on Thanksgiving and some of its regular viewers couldn’t stomach a forensics tale after a full meal.

An estimated 25.9 million viewers watched “Desperate Housewives,� in which George continued trying to manipulate Bree to the very end. Surging “Grey’s Anatomy� on ABC was the week’s third most popular show. CBS drew strong numbers for the first of many holiday-themed programs, the TV movie “Silver Bells.�

CBS averaged 14.2 million viewers for the week. ABC had 11.4 million but won among the 18-to-49-year-old demographic watched closely by advertisers. NBC had 9.2 million viewers, Fox had 9 million, UPN had 3.3 million, the WB had 3.3 million and Pax TV had 610,000.

NBC’s “Nightly News� won the evening news race, averaging 11 million viewers. ABC’s “World News Tonight� had 9.3 million viewers and the “CBS Evening News� had 8.2 million.