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With Barbara Walters filling in the 10 p.m. timeslot and earning substantial viewer increases over "Life on Mars," the British import recently put on hiatus until January, ABC scored a close win Thursday night over CBS, according to early estimates from Nielsen.

ABC scored a 4.1 rating/11 share in adults 18-49 for the evening (with 12.2 million viewers overall), narrowly defeating CBS (3.8/10 in 18-49, 13.6 million viewers overall).

The Eye's "Survivor: Gabon" handily won the 8 o'clock hour (4.0/11 in 18-49, 12.7 million viewers overall) defeating ABC's "Ugly Betty" (2.6/7 in 18-49, 8.4 million viewers overall). Both shows were on par from Nov. 20, the most recent Thursday with new programming. Thanksgiving offered mostly repeats or specials.

"My Name Is Earl" (1.4/4 in 18-49, 3.7 million viewers overall) and "Kath and Kim" (2.2/6 in 18-49, 4.8 million viewers overall) came in third for NBC, defeating a repeat of Fox's hourlong "Kitchen Nightmares" (1.5/4 in 18-49, 3.7 million viewers overall).

At 9 o'clock, ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" (5.5/14 in 18-49, 15.1 million viewers overall) scored the best demo numbers of the night but CBS' "CSI" (4.8/12 in 18-49, 17.3 million viewers overall) was the most watched show. Both "Grey's" and "CSI" showed a 9% demo erosion from Nov. 20.

NBC's "The Office" (4.3/11 in 18-49, 8.3 million viewers overall) was the Peacock's most-watched show of the night while Emmy winner "30 Rock" earned 3.4/8 in 18-49, 7.1 million viewers overall. Both shows posted similar numbers from two weeks ago. The second hour of Fox's "Kitchen Nightmares" (1.8/5 in 18-49, 4.0 million viewers overall) finished fourth.

Viewers were fascinated by "Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating People of 2008" (4.2/11 in 18-49, 13.2 million viewers overall), which marked a major improvement for ABC over "Life on Mars" at 10 o'clock. Demo was up 59% and an increase of 5.5 million viewers overall. Only a handful of those new viewers came from NBC and CBS as second place "ER" (3.2/9 in 18-49, 8.2 million viewers overall) and third place "Eleventh Hour" (2.7/7 in 18-49, 10.9 million viewers overall), respectively, were on par from Nov. 20.

Preliminary 18-49 averages for the night: ABC, 4.1/11; CBS, 3.8/10; NBC, 3.1/8; Fox, 1.7/4; CW, 0.8/2.

In total viewers: CBS, 13.6 million; ABC, 12.2 million; NBC, 7.1 million; Fox, 3.9 million; CW, 2.1 million.