Viewers

The Ravens-Patriots and Giants-49ers championship games Sunday drew the largest audiences of any shows on television since the Super Bowl, according to Nielsen data released by the NFL. Sunday's games also made for the most watched championship Sunday in three decades. The Ravens loss to the Patriots was seen by 48.7 million viewers, while the Giants victory over the 49ers drew 57.6 million. But the latter was in prime time and went into overtime, which makes a big difference.

An audience of 849,000 area viewers tuned into WJZ-TV Sunday to see the Baltimore Ravens beat the Houston Texans in the divisional playoff game, station managment said Monday. That is 3,000 viewers more than the audience that saw the the Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers in a regular season game on Nov. 6 in prime time on WBAL, Baltimore's NBC affiliate. But that game, which the Ravens won 23-20, was in Pittsbugh. And that means most of the 70,000 people who were at M&T Stadium Sunday were at home in front of TV's in the Baltimore area for the Steelers game.

High school carpentry courses have given Paul "Pasha" Lippincott the skills to build a deck and a fence at his Towson home and the confidence to move ahead with a floor-to-ceiling renovation of the family kitchen. While completing his senior year and planning to pursue construction management in college, he also has gathered enough know-how and aplomb to demonstrate basic do-it-yourself tasks on BCPS-TV. The senior at George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology just taped a segment for "So Easy a Kid Can Do It," a series that debuted Monday on the county schools' cable television channel.

Andy Rooney, whose CBS career spans the entire post-war history of network news, died Friday as a result of complications following minor surgery, the network announced. A mainstay of Sunday night viewing for millions of Americans, the 92-year-old Rooney only stepped down from his regular commentary post on "60 Minutes" last month. Here's the release from CBS News: Andy Rooney, the 60 MINUTES commentator known to generations for his wry, humorous and contentious television essays - a unique genre he is credited with inventing - died last night (4)

This year, I gave up reporting cable news ratings every month. The numbers and spin tell us about the horse race to some extent. But what they mainly do is distract us from the important moral and cultural stories of the way these channels are warping our view of the world with their ideological and show biz priorities rather than any genuine commitment to news and information. But there are ratings, and then, there are ratings. And the October numbers that just came out offer a sobering snapshot of just how badly CNN's misadventures in programming are going -- even as they cheapen their news brand identity to try and find larger audiences.

In the new world of endless channels and multiple ways to watch TV, you almost never see as dramatic a change in viewing as the one unfolding in Baltimore this fall. After a year of speculation about how the end of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" would affect the fortunes of local stations, the October "sweeps" ratings period shows WJZ surpassing longtime ratings champ WBAL in the afternoon and early evening. Call it the aftereffect of the legendary Oprah Factor. Even if she hasn't yet found a way to translate her ratings magic to her new cable channel OWN, Winfrey still has an impact on local TV. Last October, WBAL, Baltimore's Hearst-owned NBC affiliate, was drawing 74,700 total viewers from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.

I don't have time for a full review, but I do want to alert viewers to the premiere tonight on HBO of director Martin Scorsese's "George Harrison: Living in the Material World. " This is one of the most ambitious and daring biographical films that I have ever seen on TV. I am not a big Beatles fan. And of the Beatles, Harrison was my least favorite. But Scorsese helped me understand, appreciate and ultimately care more than I expected to for Harrison and the challenging journey the guitarist chose to make of his life.

Sunday's football game between the Baltimore Ravens and New York Jets was seen by 18.9 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research data released by NBC. While that is down about 10 percent from what the Sunday night telecast had been drawing, the telecast was still the most watched prime-time show of the week among young viewers (18 to 49 years of age). The overall audience was far and away the largest on television Sunday night. The dip in overall viewing was attirbuted to the blowout nature of the game with the Ravens jumping off to a fast 20 to 7 lead and never trailing as they went on to win 34-17.

Baltimore takes its TV image seriously - very seriously and at the highest levels. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake championed last month's Baltimore Grand Prix, in part because she said positive TV coverage of the race would "change the way the world sees Baltimore. " As her spokesman, Ryan O'Doherty, explained: "Many television viewers have a negative view of Baltimore based on TV crime dramas, and the Grand Prix provided a great opportunity for Baltimore to shine on national television and internationally to over 100 countries for several hours.

Dolphins are so cute that many kids wish they could have them as pets. These marine cuties are too big for the home aquarium, so kids will have to content themselves with watching pint-sized characters nurse an injured dolphin back to health in "Dolphin Tale. " This family-oriented movie is so squarely pitched at very young viewers that their adult guardians may find themselves losing count of how many thuddingly obvious life lessons are imparted along the way. It's such a sweet-natured example of cinematic therapy that older viewers are likely to get over any reservations about its thematic obviousness and end up liking it too. Although it's based on an actual case involving a dolphin that lost its tail and had to learn to live with an ingeniously crafted prosthetic tail, "Dolphin Tale" has been amply fitted with enough dramatic elements to ensure that it works as an inspirational tale.