‘Dancing With the Stars’ Still a Huge Draw for ‘Good Morning America’ Crowd

Dancing With The Stars Good Morning America - H 2012

ABC

Dancing With the Stars' finale ratings may have been down, year over year and compared to the spring season, but ABC's reality flagship remains a big draw elsewhere on the network.

After their victory red eye flight from Los Angeles to New York just hours after Tuesday's season ender, the final three couples made their obligatory appearance on Good Morning America. And the appearance gave the show a record advantage over its biggest competitor.

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Early numbers give Wednesday's GMA its widest single day margin of victory over Today since September, 2004. Specifically, it pulled 5.687 million viewers, topping Today by 1.299 million. GMA was also victorious in the demo (2.133 million, 218,000 over Today), though that was no record.

GMA was up 25 percent in total viewers and 19 percent in adults 25-54 from the last Wednesday -- when the gap with Today last week was only 15,000 viewers. The show nabbed similar boosts the last two times Dancing With the Stars finalists appeared on the show in the wake of the finale.

Winners Melissa Rycroft and Tony Dovolani and finalists Shawn Johnson, Derek Hough, Kelly Monaco and Val Chmerkovskiy have since been making the rounds on other ABC properties including The View.

Michael O'Connell