That's on a par with the 46.1 million people who watched the first duel between President Clinton and Bob Dole four years ago. It didn't come close to the all-time record of 80 million people who tuned in to watch President Carter and Ronald Reagan square off in 1980.

More people -- 19 million -- watched the debate on ABC than any other network, Nielsen said Wednesday.

Fox's decision to broadcast the series premiere of "Dark Angel" instead of the debate was criticized by the head of the Federal Communications Commission, but it paid off handsomely for the network.

The sci-fi thriller about a young woman (Jessica Alba) with superhuman skills produced by shadowy government genetics experiments drew 17.4 million viewers. It more than doubled Fox's normal viewership for the night and was the highest-rated Tuesday evening in the network's history.

Fox was the first major broadcast network to ever refuse to show a presidential debate live.

An estimated 6.2 million people saw the debate on NBC, either live or tape delay. Several NBC stations aired the baseball playoff game between the Oakland Athletics and New York Yankees instead, and that drew 4.8 million viewers, Nielsen said.

Bush and Gore have two more debates scheduled, on Oct. 11 and 17. Vice presidential candidates Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney debate Thursday.

An estimated 3.2 million people watched the debate on CNN, 1.9 million on Fox News Channel and 1 million on MSNBC. That was the biggest audience ever for a single event in Fox News Channel's five-year history.

Nielsen's numbers do not include people who may have seen the debate on PBS stations or C-SPAN.

Meanwhile, David Letterman was already poking fun at the debate for being a snoozer. On Wednesday's "Late Show," he offered 10 ways to make the Gore-Bush debates more exciting.

Among the suggestions: Replace pitchers of water with pitchers of gin, give extra points to candidate who gets in the best "your mama is so fat" joke and show baseball playoff game on large screen behind the candidates.