Here’s a news flash: “Lost” is a hit online. But so is CW’s “Privileged.”

For the first time, Nielsen Online has released rankings for online streaming of episodes and clips.
“Lost” tops the chart for the month of December with 1.4 million unique viewers, followed by NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” with 1.1 million.

By the yardstick of the total time viewers spent with a show online, the surprise leader in December was CW’s “Privileged.” The rating-challenged dramedy drew only 29,000 unique viewers, but those that did tune in stuck around for an average of 214.6 minutes.

There’s a big caveat to these rankings, however, in that they don’t include shows streamed via Hulu because Hulu won’t breakout its numbers to Nielsen (at least if I'm reading Nielsen-ese right. A Nielsen Online rep would only say that Hulu is "not available in our syndication service.")

Nielsen’s survey includes the websites of Hulu partners NBC and Fox, as well as ABC, CBS and CW. But by all accounts, Hulu's vid streaming traffic has outpaced that of the Peacock and Fox nets' individual websites. The survey captures clips that are embedded on other websites and blogs, as long as the streams come from the network's proprietary player (but not Hulu's player).

Gordon Ramsay fell in love yesterday -- with a Bloody Mary sorbet.

"I was slightly dubious about it" at first, he confessed, noting that it is seasoned with Tabasco sauce. "Now I'm over the moon. It's working brilliantly."

Ramsay shared this morsel during a phone chat yesterday afternoon (he was somewhere in England) to talk about the mega renewal deal he's just inked with Fox for two more seasons of "Hell's Kitchen" and "Kitchen Nightmares," plus a blind series commitment and plans for a  live "cook-along-with-Gordon" special sometime in the coming season.

That's a lot for a guy who's already hosting multiple shows in the U.K. and running a growing portfolio of Ramsay-branded restaurants.

"It's a happy problem," Ramsay assures. "I take it all very seriously, and I have an amazing (production) team behind it all."

Mike Darnell, Fox's prexy of alternative programming and Ramsay's biggest fan on this side of the Atlantic, is in awe of Ramsay's work ethic. He doesn't just host "Hell's Kitchen" and "Kitchen Nightmares"; he is those shows, Darnell says.

"Unlike a regular reality show host comes in, does his job and leaves -- these are incredibly demanding television shows for Gordon," Darnell says. "On 'Nightmares,' he spends four-to-five days in each city. He's on camera 12 hours a day. This is a hard-working man."

In an effort to rev up for the fall season, it's time to inaugurate what I intend to make a regular feature of this blog, namely lots of video snippets from our favorite, and even not-so-favorite and we're-not-sure-yet, shows.

Let's call it Clip Madness. (This edition was made possible by the kind folks at Fox and ABC who helped me quickly wrangle some clips. In subsequent weeks we'll spread the spotlight around to all the nets that care to offer up easy-to-embed snippets.)

Clip Madness is presented in the spirit of this wonderful time of year, the tail end of the honeymoon period when every new show is full of promise, this year's sleeper, a new "Friends," the next "CSI," a slow-building gem a la "The Office," etc. etc. Showrunners are starting to stock up on Mylanta, vodka and Vicodin, but network marketing mavens are in their element as they head into the final now-or-never stretch of piquing the American public's interest in what the programming department came up with this year.

(Pictured above: A scene you're not likely to see on ABC's "Pushing Daisies," for reasons that will become clear in the clip posted below. Pic of actors Lee Pace and Anna Friel kissing comes from the Aug. 16 screening of "Daisies" at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.)