NEW YORK, N.Y. – A night of Disney tunes led ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” to the largest audience of its current season and to the top of the television rankings.

The Nielsen company said an estimated 12.5 million people watched “Dancing,” which featured the contestants showing their steps to songs made famous by ABC’s parent company. Light fare dominated the top of Nielsen’s charts, with NBC’s “The Voice” and “Little Big Shots” also scoring well.

Some of CBS’ most popular series — “NCIS,” ”The Big Bang Theory” and “NCIS: New Orleans” — showed repeat episodes, shuffling the rankings.

Still, CBS’ bench strength enabled it to win the week, averaging 7.5 million viewers in prime time. NBC had 5.7 million and ABC had 5.4 million, while winning among the most valuable youthful demographic. Fox had 3.2 million viewers, Univision had 1.9 million, Telemundo had 1.29 million, ION Television had 1.27 million and the CW had 1.1 million.

Fox News Channel was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.15 million viewers in prime time. CNN had 1.66 million, USA had 1.61 million, HGTV had 1.46 million and TBS had 1.37 million.

NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8.3 million viewers. ABC’s “World News Tonight” was second with 8 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.8 million viewers.

For the week of April 11-17, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “Dancing With the Stars,” ABC, 12.51 million; “The Voice” (Tuesday), NBC, 10.81 million; “Little Big Shots,” NBC, 10.66 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 10.45 million; “The Voice” (Monday), NBC, 10.41 million; “Blue Bloods,” CBS, 10.41 million; “Empire,” Fox, 10.11 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 9.99 million; “Madam Secretary,” CBS, 9.57 million. “NCIS: New Orleans” (Tuesday, 8 p.m.), CBS, 9.05 million.

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ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox is owned by 21st Century Fox. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks.

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Online:

http://www.nielsen.com