Winfrey's first Academy Awards interview special reached 15.4 million viewers last Thursday on ABC. Walters' special on Oscars night, her 26th, drew an audience of 14.5 million, according to Nielsen Media Research.

The two media titans made a point of saying they were not in competition, and their shows had separate themes. Winfrey set up Oscar winners to interview other Oscar winners—Julia Roberts and George Clooney, for example. Walters did her traditional interview show, this year with Helen Mirren, Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson.

Walters' show ran before the Oscars in eastern time zones, and after the ceremony out west. Winfrey's special ran on Thursday, directly following ABC's hottest show, "Grey's Anatomy."

For the network ratings competition last week, the arithmetic was simple: three nights of "American Idol" trumps one night of the Academy Awards.

The Oscars were seen by 40.2 million viewers on Sunday, up from last year's audience of 38.8 million, Nielsen said.

Even though that led ABC to its best ratings week in more than a year, Fox took the crown because it aired an "American Idol" special Thursday to go with its normal two nights of competition.

Fox averaged 15 million viewers in prime time last week (8.7 rating, 14 share), while ABC averaged 13 million (8.1, 13). CBS had 11.2 million (7.2, 11), NBC had 8 million (5.2, 8), the CW had 3 million (1.9, 3) and the i network had 680,000 (0.4, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with 4.3 million viewers (2.2, 3), Telemundo had 840,000 (0.5, 1) and TeleFutura had 680,000 (0.4, 1).

For the second time in three weeks, ABC's "World News" won the evening news ratings race, averaging 9.4 million viewers (6.4 rating, 13 share). NBC's "Nightly News" averaged 9.1 million (6.2, 12) and the "CBS Evening News" had 6.9 million (4.9, 9).

A ratings point represents 1,114,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 111.4 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Feb. 19-25, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: "Academy Awards," ABC, 40.17 million; "American Idol" (Wednesday), Fox, 30.46 million; "American Idol" (Tuesday), Fox, 29.53 million; "Grey's Anatomy," ABC, 27.39 million; "Road to the Oscars," ABC, 27.1 million; "American Idol" (Thursday), Fox, 24.44 million; "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 21.78 million; "CSI: Miami," CBS, 19.23 million; "Deal or No Deal" (Monday), NBC, 17.62 million; "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 16.56 million.

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ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is a division of CBS Corp. Fox is a unit of News Corp. NBC is owned by General Electric Co. Telemundo is owned by General Electric. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. The i network is owned by ION Media Networks.

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