NEW YORK - Early indications indicate the battle between "The Hurt Locker" and "Avatar" for dominance at the Academy Awards helped ABC draw viewers.
The Nielsen Co.'s overnight measurement of the nation's 56 biggest markets gave the telecast a 26.5 rating and 40 audience share. That's a 14 per cent increase over the same rating for last year's telecast, when "Slumdog Millionaire" was named best picture.
"The Hurt Locker" won Sunday.
Nielsen was expected to give an estimate of the audience size later Monday. Last year's telecast was seen by 36.3 million people.
The metered market ratings aren't completely comparable to each other since Nielsen is using digital video recorder data this year when it hasn't in the past. If viewers delayed watching it in previous years and picked it up on DVR later in the evening, they're counted in the rating; last year they weren't.
