The network rode the strength of two NFL games in the opening week of the season to its first weekly win in the Nielsen Media Research ratings since last January -- when it showed an NFL conference championship game.

The Sunday matchup between the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys was seen by 18.2 million viewers, or more than double the 7.1 million who watched Britney Spears clomp around the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards at the same time. But it was down 20 percent from the audience for last year's Sunday-night opener featuring Peyton and Eli Manning.

Thursday's NFL opener, a lopsided game between the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints, was down 7 percent from last year's opener.

Nonetheless, since there wasn't much else on besides reruns and games, NBC easily won the week with an average of 8.2 million viewers in prime time (5.4 rating, 9 share). CBS averaged 6.8 million viewers (4.6, 8), Fox had 5.5 million (3.6, 6), ABC had 5.4 million (3.6, 6), the CW had 1.9 million (1.3, 2), My Network TV had 1.1 million (0.7, 1) and ION Television had 640,000 (0.4, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision averaged 3.3 million viewers (1.8 rating, 3 share), Telemundo had 1 million (0.6, 1), TeleFutura had 530,000 (0.3, 1) and Azteca had 130,000 (0.1, 0).

ABC's "World News" won the evening-news ratings race, averaging 7.81 million viewers to NBC "Nightly News" and its 7.78 million (both 5.4, 12). The "CBS Evening News," despite Katie Couric's trip to Iraq, had a record-low 5.5 million (3.9, 8).

A ratings point represents 1,130,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 112.8 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Sept. 3-9, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: NFL Sunday Night Football: N.Y. Giants at Dallas, NBC, 18.16 million; NFL Thursday Night Football: New Orleans at Indianapolis, NBC, 17.79 million; "NFL Thursday Night Pre-Kick Show," NBC, 13.58 million; "NFL Sunday Night Pre-Kick Show," NBC, 12.38 million; "60 Minutes," CBS, 10.84 million; "The OT," Fox, 10.1 million; "Without a Trace," CBS, 9.5 million; "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 9.49 million; "Football Night in America," NBC, 9.18 million; "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 9.11 million.

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. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks.