Ellen Gray: 14.8 million tune in to hear Jaycee Lee Dugard's story

SO MUCH television, so little time:

* ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer's "Primetime" interview with kidnapping victim Jaycee Lee Dugard wasn't just Sunday night's most-watched program, it was also a breath of fresh air after a week in which the image of motherhood took more than one very public beating.

With an average viewership of nearly 14.8 million over two hours - peaking at nearly 15.7 million between 10 and 10:30 p.m., according to the preliminary Nielsens - the special was the first TV interview Dugard's given since she was freed and the most-watched summer newsmagazine telecast in more than seven years.

Coming as it did on the heels of the Casey Anthony verdict and last week's NBC free-for-all with Nadya "Octomom" Suleman and her octuplets (maybe that "Today" show set could use some childproofing?), Dugard's sit-down with Sawyer was both restrained and surprisingly uplifting.

Especially for something that was largely meant to promote Dugard's memoir, A Stolen Life, which comes out today.

Here, after all, is someone who lost 18 years of her life to the mentally ill pedophile who fathered her two daughters, and she's nevertheless a responsible enough parent to keep ABC's cameras far away from her children.

Not bad for someone who told Sawyer she'd learned about child care from watching television.

If only ABC had behaved half as responsibly, viewers shaken by Dugard's recounting of the abuse that made her pregnant for the first time at the age of 13 might not have been subjected during commercial breaks to promotions for "The Bachelorette" - "Brad & Emily: Why it's really over!" - and for the "three little girls" of "Charlie's Angels."

But then overcoming tone deafness isn't something generally taught on TV.

* Dugard's book isn't the only big release today with a TV tie-in.

A Dance with Dragons, the long-long-long-awaited fifth volume of the George R.R. Martin series on which HBO's "Game of Thrones" is based, arrives just about five years after Martin first predicted it would.

He's 62. He supposedly still has two books to go in the series. You do the math.

Also out today: Then Came You, the latest novel from Queen Village best-seller Jennifer Weiner, who produces at a far more dependable rate, this being her ninth book since 2001.

Weiner, who's also executive producer of ABC Family's new sitcom "State of Georgia," writes about the formation of a very modern family through fertility treatments.

* First it was MTV's "Jersey Shore" invading Italy, now it's those terrors of "Today," Kathie Lee and Hoda, taking on our neighbors to the north.

The two head for Montreal on Thursday and Friday to "participate in favorite local pastimes, including dancing the tango and cooking poutine," says NBC.

Trivia alert: This is, according to the network, "the first time the entire 10 a.m. hour of 'Today' has broadcast outside of the United States."

The A-team - that would be Ann Curry and Matt Lauer - do, of course, get out of the country pretty regularly.

But are even the generally tolerant Canadians ready for Kathie Lee?

* There'll be no hiding soon from "Undercover Boss," the CBS show in which CEOs demonstrate their inability to perform tasks for which underlings are paid a small fraction of what the big bosses make in order to learn Meaningful Lessons.

Both TLC and Oprah Winfrey's OWN - corporate half-siblings under the Discovery brand - have acquired the rights to rerun the show starting this fall, and as "Undercover Boss" producer Stephen Lambert noted in a prepared statement, it's only fitting.

"Oprah helped launch 'Boss' when she devoted a whole show to previewing the series just before its post-Super Bowl launch last year, so it's wonderful that the off-network rights have now gone to her network," he said.

And this is why we'll probably never have to see Oprah secretly scrubbing the toilets at Harpo with the cameras rolling - she already knows her business. *

Send email to graye@phillynews.com.