Tony Awards creeps up in the ratings

Viewers seeking a fix of perversion had somewhere to turn Sunday night.

I speak, of course, of the 60th annual Tony Awards on CBS, which for most of its three hours was businesslike if a little dull -- the “Lullaby of Broadway” is not supposed to be taken literally, folks -- but at other times looked like a suitable backdrop for Madonna during her sadomasochistic “Erotica” phase.

Attired in designer Isaac Mizrahi’s bondage-inspired get-ups, Alan Cumming and Cyndi Lauper resembled sleep-deprived refugees from a downtown rave party with their duet from “The Threepenny Opera.” If that wasn’t weird enough for you, Patti LuPone and Michael Cerveris added a layer of leather-bound creepiness to their medley from “Sweeney Todd,” a show that due to its subject matter (serial murder and cannibalism) really doesn’t need any extra layers of creepiness.

Maybe the kink helped the ratings, which climbed 20% compared with last year, to 7.8 million total viewers, according to early figures from Nielsen Media Research; that’s the biggest Tony audience since 2003. But it’s more likely the Tonys picked up a few new eyeballs thanks to the presence of Julia Roberts -- conspicuously un-nominated for her performance in the critically drubbed “Three Days of Rain,” but like a trouper she showed up anyway and offered a polite but oddly distancing tribute to attendees (“You are insanely talented people!” -- i.e., this Oscar winner is not one of “you people”).

Or maybe the spike was due to Oprah Winfrey, who produced the musical “The Color Purple” and, if her egocentric remarks at the awards were any indication, also made everything else in the world that is worthy and life-affirming.

In the end, the Tonys gave top honors to two less-than-scandalous productions, Alan Bennett’s prep-school play “The History Boys” and the musical “Jersey Boys,” about the rise of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Of course, few Broadway shows of any stripe make much of a ripple these days among young people outside of New York, and the Tony telecast predictably struggled among adults aged 18-49, with an anemic 1.4 rating/4 share, roughly equal to what the show did last year.

But then Sunday was a brutal night in the trenches. ABC’s telecast of Game 2 of the NBA Finals between the Miami Heat and the Dallas Mavericks was the night’s most-watched program, averaging 11.3 million viewers between 9 and 11 p.m., according to early results.

Many viewers were also siphoned off by cable offerings. HBO brought back the western “Deadwood” and the Hollywood comedy “Entourage,” plus premiered the new comedy “Lucky Louie.” And USA brought back its hit alien-abduction series “The 4400.” Cable ratings will be available Tuesday.