Ratings: New kid 'Eleventh Hour' helps CBS win Thursday
Oct 17, 2008, 05:07 PM | by Annie Barrett
Categories: Ratings, TV Biz, TV Ratings
New CBS series Eleventh Hour improved on its ratings from last week's debut, pulling in 12 million viewers during the 10 p.m. hour, according to last night's preliminary data, to help CBS win Thursday night. Survivor: Gabon (12.9 million viewers at 8 p.m.) and CSI (18.8 million at 9 p.m.) both won their time slots, with Survivor dipping just 4 percent from last week, and CSI losing 18 percent of its generous season premiere audience, though the procedural -- now minus one more sexy scientist (Gary Dourdan, who departed last week) -- still outperformed last season's average (16 million).
ABC took second place for the night, thanks to steady ratings for Ugly Betty (8.2 million viewers at 8 p.m.) and Grey's Anatomy (14.6 million at 9 p.m., a slight gain from last week). The second episode of new series Life on Mars, however, lost 17 percent of its debut audience and averaged 8.5 million viewers during the 10 p.m. hour.
NBC had a rough evening last night. New comedy Kath & Kim lost 20 percent of its series-premiere audience -- only 6 million wanted to gawk at Molly Shannon's tacky outfits this time around -- while the second of three installments of Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update Thursday lost 2 million viewers from last week, My Name is Earl was down 7 percent, The Office lost 9 percent, and ER dipped 5 percent. (Didn't Dr. Abby Lockhart deserve a better-attended final farewell?)
Fox's freshman series Hole in the Wall maintained its 3.6 million average from the previous episode, while Kitchen Nightmares lost 19 percent of its viewership since its last new showing back on Sept. 25. Meanwhile, The CW maintained its loyal Thursday night audience from last week, with 4.1 million viewers for Smallville and 3.1 million for Supernatural.
And now, an extra-special late-night morsel: Presidential candidate John McCain's appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman brought the show its most viewers since Oprah Winfrey's appearance in 2005. No official numbers yet on how many of last night's 6.5 million viewers were plumbers named Joe.
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