The savvy combo of sophomore seriesSamantha Who?and ratings gobblerDancing With the Starshelped ABC win Monday night, according to preliminary ratings data.Samanthas season premiere (pictured:Christina Applegate) drew in 11.7 viewers nowhere near the 14.9 million it banked with last falls series premiere, but up significantly over season 1s 11.2 million average.DWTS, meanwhile, averaged 1.1 million viewers less than last week, but still handily won the 8 p.m. hour.
ABC may have reigned supreme with its trustyDWTS-Samantha Who?one-two punch, but the other networks managed to make notable gains from last week.
CBSsThe Big Bang Theory(9.4 million) and CBSHow I Met Your Mother(9.1 million) both saw slight gains in overall viewers from last week, and the EyesTwo and a Half Men(14.6 million) gained 700,000 viewers from last week and placed first in the 18-49 demo.
CBS freshman seriesWorst Week(9.8 million) gained a million viewers from last Monday (when it lost a half-million viewers) and gives the impression of climbing back toward the 11 million viewers it attracted for the Sept. 22 premiere.
Over at NBC,Heroesis at least moving in the right direction with this weeks boost to 8.6 million from last weeks 8.2 million, thought its still down 26 percent from last seasons average.
And the PeacocksChuck(6 million), which has struggled so far this season, managed a 100,000-viewer gain from last weeks audience, which was down 11 percent from the disappointing premiere viewership.
As for The CWsOne Tree Hill, the latest installment of the shows sixth season drew in 3.4 million viewers, which matched the series highest-rated episode on Sept. 29, whileGossip Girlaveraged 3.3 million viewers, down a bit from its last episode (3.5 million) but still way over its season 1 average (2.2 million).
At 10 p.m.,CSI: Miamigave CBS its usual win for this hour, with 13.0 million viewers, though that 9 percent drop continues the dramas downward trend this season.CSIs competition came from the series premiere of NBCs Christian Slater vehicleMy Own Worst Enemy, which played head games with 7.3 million households and only lost 9 percent of its viewers over the hour, and ABCsBoston Legal(8.5 million), which lost 1.3 million of last weeks viewers, presumably in large part due to having aSamantha Who?lead-in this week instead of that spangly behemothDWTS,which last weekmanaged to helpLegalactually improve upon its season premiere numbers.
Fox aired baseballs National League Championship Series last night, taking the third spot in households with 7.3 million viewers and precluding new episodes ofTerminator: The Sarah Connor ChroniclesandPrison Break.
