AP Photo / NBC

Mark Spitz has been vanquished. But not so Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia.

Michael Phelps' Spitz-sinking swim on Saturday elevated NBC to its best ratings on the once-mighty, now-dead night in about a generation.

Still, the golden boy of the Beijing Games couldn't topple The Golden Girls, which held on to its title as NBC's most-watched Saturday-night show of the last 18 years.

Overall, NBC's first full week of Olympic action was ratings gold, with the network scoring the most lopsided Nielsen wins in more than 20 years.

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ZumaPress.com

Maybe there really is something in the water.

Where the Beijing Games are concerned, NBC's ratings are piling up about as high as swimming records are falling.

Today, the network estimated 157 million people, or more than half the U.S. population, caught some Olympic action on at least one of its outlets, including USA, MSNBC and Oxygen, during the first four days of the games.

That's an 11 percent viewership increase over the first four days of the 2004 Athens Games, NBC said.

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Lars Baron/Bongarts/Getty Images

All those fireworks were not for naught. Certainly not from NBC's perspective.

Ratings for the network's coverage of the Olympic Games opening ceremony from Beijing were up nearly 20 percent over the 2004 Summer Games from Athens, NBC said today.

If the estimates hold, Friday's elaborate, made-for-HD spectacle will go down as the third highest-rated Summer Games opening ceremony on Nielsen Media Research record.

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Nickelodeon

Consistency has a long, funny name: SpongeBob SquarePants.

The Nickelodeon cartoon was its usual dominant self in the ratings last week, placing 20 telecasts—yes, 20—among cable's top 50 most watched programs.

The highest-rated episode was a Thursday-morning one that averaged 3.9 million, or more viewers than this summer's highest-rated Project Runway yet (3.3 million).

The "least"-watched top 50 episode was a Friday-afternoon telecast that averaged 3.2 million, or more viewers than the strong-premiering Lifetime movie Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal (3 million).

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Carin Baer/AMC

Sure, Mad Men isn't as big as a rain delay yet, but please, one thing at a time.

The Rat Pack-era drama, which netted nearly as many Emmy nominations this month as it did viewers last season, kicked off its second year Sunday night before a record 2.1 million, the latest Nielsen Media Research stats show.

The premiere number was a whopping 129 percent improvement over the 915,000 viewers the typical Mad Men episode averaged last season.

Previously a show familiar with the phrase "critically loved, little watched," Mad Men got a profile boost July 18 when it was nominated for more Emmys, 16, than any other drama series.

But for all the raves, shows on Sunday night that netted larger audiences than the AMC series included:

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ABC/Greg Zabilski

Guess not too many people are planning to stay for the end credits of High School Musical 3.

High School Musical: Get in the Picture, the new ABC reality show that promises to cast its winner in a music video to play during HSM3's aforementioned crawl, failed its first—and second—ratings tests.

Sunday's inaugural episode placed 69th in Nielsen Media Research's latest weekly rankings. It finished fourth, or last, in its time slot behind nonstellar broadcast competition led by CBS' Big Brother (33rd place, 5.7 million). Its 4 million viewers were more fitting for an umpteenth HSM rerun on Disney Channel than a broadcast premiere.

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Bravo

New York is obviously the place to see and be seen. Well, being Heidi Klum helps with the latter.

Nearly 3 million people tuned in to the fifth-season premiere of Project Runway last night, giving Bravo its largest-ever audience for a series season premiere, according to figures released by the network.

And of the 2.915 million who tuned in for the Peabody Award-winning competition show's last season on Bravo before it heads to Lifetime, a record 1.81 million fell into that oh-so-important 18-49-year-old bracket, the age group most attractive to the advertisers who stick all those annoying commercials in between snips of the scissors.

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Andrew Eccles/TNT

The Closer's back. One million viewers aren't.

TNT's hit detective drama kicked off its fourth season last night before, on average, 7.8 million viewers, the network said, down 1 million viewers from last summer's third-season opener.

The premiere audience was the smallest for the Kyra Sedgwick show since the first season's inaugural episode averaged 7 million back in 2005.

Coincidentally, or perhaps not, last night's opener marked the first time The Closer began its season in July, rather than in June.

Still, even a smaller-than-last-year Closer is a big Closer.

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Patrick Ecclesine/FOX

The appetizer was hot.

The penultimate episode of Hell's Kitchen was TV's most watched show among young adults, the latest Nielsen Media Research stats show.

Overall, the Fox cooking-and-yelling series averaged just over 8 million viewers, and finished 10th.

The installment featured finalists Louis Petrozza and Christina Machamer building their "dream" restaurants. Harsh taskmaster Gordon Ramsay makes his final call tonight, bringing to a close the show's fourth season.

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ABC/ADAM LARKEY

Splash, splat, waaah…

The sounds of summer TV are distinctive—and popular, with solid premieres last week for Wipeout, I Survived a Japanese Game Show and The Baby Borrowers, per Nielsen Media Research stats.

ABC's Wipeout, a slippery, sloppy obstacle course fit for American gladiators, but tackled by American Joes and Janes, was the most watched show among TV's prized, but ever-dwindling pool of 18-to-49-year-olds.

Overall, it averaged 10 million viewers, posted its network's biggest summer premiere in three years, and ranked second behind NBC's veteran summer show, America's Got Talent (11.7 million).

I Survived a Japanese Game Show, an ABC offering fit for a Survivor-chosen island, but set on, yes, a pads-and-helmets-required Japanese game show, pulled in at 10th place (8 million).

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Disney Channel / Fred Hayes

Camp Rock premiered big and repeated well. Now it only has to keep it up for another, oh, two and a half years.

Like High School Musical.

Giving the Jonas Brothers' vehicle something to shoot for, the original HSM kept on keeping on last week, scoring nearly as many viewers for its 33rd—yes, 33rd—airing as a two-day-old rerun of Camp Rock.

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Disney Channel/John Medland

The question was: Could three Jonases take down one Zac Efron? The answer was yes—and no.

Friday night's premiere of the Jonas Brothers-populated TV musical Camp Rock averaged 8.9 million viewers, the Disney Channel said today.

That's bigger than the original, Efron-led High School Musical, which debuted before 7.7 million viewers. But it's smaller—significantly smaller—than the 17.2 million who turned out for last August's return of Efron in High School Musical 2.

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