Ratings: 'CSI' puts CBS on top
Oct 10, 2008, 03:35 PM | by Aubry D’Arminio
Categories: Ratings, TV Biz, TV Ratings
Goodbye, Warrick Brown. Hello, superb ratings. Twenty-three million viewers tuned in to CBS at 9 p.m. Thursday night to watch the long-awaited premiere of CSI (pictured: Marg Helgenberger as Willows), which featured a final sayonara to Gary Dourdan’s crime scene investigator Warrick (shot in the head in last season’s cliffhanger finale). That’s slightly below the previous year’s premiere, which nabbed 25.3 million viewers, but well above the show’s 16 million last-season average and more than enough to make CSI’s premiere the first of the season to nab over 20 million viewers.
CSI's coup helped make CBS the top network last night, even though more than 50 percent of CSI watchers clicked off the network before the debut of its new “science-based” British TV adaptation Eleventh Hour, which topped out at 11.6 million, losing 2 million viewers from its first half hour to its end. In CBS' 8 p.m. hour, Survivor: Gabon attracted a healthy 13.3 million, a small jump from last week’s 12.9 million, but still not up to the 14.2 million average who watched last season’s Survivor: China.
Another Brit import, ABC’s Life on Mars, got its series premiere at 10 p.m. and attracted 11.6 million viewers. The new show held on to 80 percent of Grey’s Anatomy’s 14.5 million viewers, won the time period in adults 25-54, and tied CBS’s Worst Week (yet another Brit-show adaptation) as the highest-rated debut this season in adults 18-49. Grey’s, on the other hand, suffered the expected decline from its premiere (which aired two weeks ago), attracting 20 percent fewer viewers than the 18.3 million that watched the season debut. Grey's is still slightly above it’s 14.4 million average, however. In ABC’s 8 p.m. slot, Ugly Betty (8.5 million) came in about even with last week’s 8.6 million and its last-season average of 8.7 million.
Over at NBC, My Name is Earl (7 million viewers) improved upon last week’s 6.6 million, and its follow up, the series debut of the Molly Shannon-lead Kath & Kim, added on to Earl’s numbers, attracting 7.5 million. At 9 p.m., The Office (9 million) scored a little below its 9.2 million premiere but above its 7.2 million average for last year. ER (9.3 million), on the other hand, bested its premiere by over a million viewers, perhaps due to it’s Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Primetime show lead-in, which attracted NBC’s biggest audience of the night at 10.6 million.
The CW's Thursday night featured two new episodes of Smallville and Supernatural. Smallville took in 4.1 million viewers (above last week's 4 million and near its 4.2 million average from the previous year), and Supernatural attracted 3.1 million (below last week’s 3.6 million but close to it’s 3.2 million last-season average). Fox aired Game 1 of the National League Championship Series to 6.2 million viewers who tuned in to watch the Phillies beat the Dodgers.
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