‘Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show’ shows ratings legs for CBS

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The models may have cavorted on the runway in little wisps of things, but the ratings were fully dressed.

CBS defied the skeptics once again Tuesday night and turned ‘The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show’ into a ratings winner.

The lingerie extravaganza stripped down before 10.3 million total viewers, up 15% compared with last year’s show, according to Nielsen.

Among the adults aged 18 to 49 demographic coveted by advertisers, ‘Victoria’s Secret’ climbed a big 35%.

PHOTOS: 2011 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show | On the catwalk

Network execs have batted away criticism of the event for years, with detractors calling it everything from sexist to idiotic (ABC broadcast the show in 2001 but it’s aired on CBS since). But ‘Victoria’s Secret’ has gradually turned into a genuine appointment viewing for CBS.

What’s that you say? You missed the whole thing? This clip provides a taste, and the whole show is available on the CBS.com site (although the video is not, strangely, embeddable).

Speaking of appointment TV, the annual re-airing of ‘Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer’ -- the 1964 Rankin/Bass stop-motion animation special familiar to a couple generations of Americans -- likewise performed strongly for CBS. An average of 12.7 million viewers tuned in, the program’s best performance in three years.

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--Scott Collins (twitter.com/scottcollinsLAT)