The 53rd Annual Grammy Awards was up over last year's telecast, which aired January 31, for its best total viewer tune-in since 2001.


The show - which aired from 8-11:30 p.m. on CBS - was watched by 26.5 million viewers, according to preliminary numbers from Nielsen. That's a 3 percent uptick compared to last year's Grammys, which pulled in 25.8 million viewers and another high note for the recording industry kudo-cast.

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The telecast, which was chock full of performances with mercifully short acceptance speeches, posted a 14.8 rating in households with a 9.9 rating among the 18-49 demographic and a 9.1 rating in the 18-34 demo for year-over-year increases of 1 percent and 4 percent, respectively.
 

Those numbers give the Grammys its best tune-in in those demos - as well as households and the 25-54 demographic (10.0 rating) -- since the 2004 telecast.
 

That was also more than enough to give CBS an easy win on Sunday night. Fox was a distant second averaging a 2.3 rating in the 18-49 demo (4.5 million viewers overall) from 7-10 p.m. with mostly new episodes of its Sunday-night animation lineup. ABC was third (2.0, 7.4 million from 7-11 p.m.) with originals of "America's Funniest Home Videos" (1.8, 7.7 million), "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" (1.6, 6.4 million), "Desperate Housewives" (2.6, 9.1 million) and "Brothers & Sisters" (1.8, 6.3 million). Those numbers mark series lows for "Desperate" and "Brothers & Sisters."
 

NBC was fourth with an anemic 0.9 rating and 4.7 million viewers with Dateline from 7-9 p.m. (1.1, 5.2 million) and back-to-back reruns of Harry's Law at 9 p.m. (0.8, 4.6 million) and 10 p.m. (0.6, 3.9 million).
 

The Grammys also may have juiced tune-in for CBS News' "60 Minutes," which featured Anderson Cooper interviewing Grammy-winning Lady Gaga. The show won the 7 p.m. hour in the demo and among total viewers, notching a 2.1 rating with 12.2 million viewers overall.