Thursday night war zone: Week 2
09/29/06 12:34 PM
By ED BARK
The premiere of Ugly Betty helped beautify ABC's prime-time ratings Thursday, pacing the network to an overall narrow win for the night among advertiser-craved 18-to-49-year-olds. CBS took Thursday in total viewers, with CSI: Crime Scene Investigation nipping ABC's Grey's Anatomy after losing last week's Round 1.
National ratings from Nielsen Media Research showed Betty pulling 16.3 million viewers overall in Thursday's first hour of prime-time. That's ABC's best showing for a scripted series in that slot since an Aug. 25, 1994 episode of Matlock.
Still, the competing third episode of CBS' Survivor: Cook Islands beat Betty by slim margins in both total viewers and 18-to-49-year-olds. That left NBC's two best comedies, My Name Is Earl and The Office, trailing far behind while Fox continued to crash and burn with two episodes of Brad Garrett's new sitcom, the fittingly titled 'Til Death
CSI, with the night's biggest overall audience haul (23.8 million), edged Grey's by a pencil-thin 290,000 viewers after losing last week by 2.8 million. Grey's still prevailed handily in the 18-49 demo while NBC's Deal or No finished far out of the money.
NBC's venerable ER remained the top draw among younger viewers against two newcomers -- CBS' Shark and ABC's Six Degrees. But the James Woods lawyer drama carried the day for CBS in total viewers with 14.6 million. Runnerup ER had 14..2 million viewers and Six Degrees dipped to 9 million.
Upshot: NBC is strictly an also-ran on a night it dominated for two decades. CBS and now ABC are the new big dogs.
The premiere of Ugly Betty helped beautify ABC's prime-time ratings Thursday, pacing the network to an overall narrow win for the night among advertiser-craved 18-to-49-year-olds. CBS took Thursday in total viewers, with CSI: Crime Scene Investigation nipping ABC's Grey's Anatomy after losing last week's Round 1.
National ratings from Nielsen Media Research showed Betty pulling 16.3 million viewers overall in Thursday's first hour of prime-time. That's ABC's best showing for a scripted series in that slot since an Aug. 25, 1994 episode of Matlock.
Still, the competing third episode of CBS' Survivor: Cook Islands beat Betty by slim margins in both total viewers and 18-to-49-year-olds. That left NBC's two best comedies, My Name Is Earl and The Office, trailing far behind while Fox continued to crash and burn with two episodes of Brad Garrett's new sitcom, the fittingly titled 'Til Death
CSI, with the night's biggest overall audience haul (23.8 million), edged Grey's by a pencil-thin 290,000 viewers after losing last week by 2.8 million. Grey's still prevailed handily in the 18-49 demo while NBC's Deal or No finished far out of the money.
NBC's venerable ER remained the top draw among younger viewers against two newcomers -- CBS' Shark and ABC's Six Degrees. But the James Woods lawyer drama carried the day for CBS in total viewers with 14.6 million. Runnerup ER had 14..2 million viewers and Six Degrees dipped to 9 million.
Upshot: NBC is strictly an also-ran on a night it dominated for two decades. CBS and now ABC are the new big dogs.
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