'New York'/'Law & Order' Race Grows Ever Closer

After it easily winning most of its timeslot battles at the start of the season, it now seems CSI: New York may have a prolonged fight on its hands with the original Law & Order over the title of Wednesday ratings champ.

According to figures published at MediaWeek, last Wednesday's new CSI: New York episode, "Officer Blue," was watched by 14.63 million people. This placed the show behind timeslot winner Law & Order by a razor-thin margin of just 40,000 viewers.

In the important adults 18-49 demographic category, CSI: New York did still win convincingly, earning a 5.4 rating with a 15 share, indicating that 5.4% of all Americans in that category watched the show, as well as 15% of those who actually had their televisions switched on at 10:00pm. Law & Order only managed to score a 4.8/13 in this category, but the gap was the smallest yet since the start of the season. Next week, Law & Order should be able to easily win in all categories, as the NBC show will be airing a fresh episode, while New York fans will have to do with a repeat of "Blink.".

While New York failed to assert its dominance, on Monday CSI: Miami scored its usual victory by attracting 22 million viewers with "After The Fall," according to Variety. In the adults 18-49 category, the show scored an 8.2/15. Next week, these ratings will undoubtedly end up being lower, as now that the November sweeps are over, CSI: Miami will also return to airing repeats.

The November Sweeps are one of four important periods each year when measurement agency Nielsens Media Research pays special attention to television viewership levels. While national television ratings are collected all year through, during the sweeps months Nielsens pays special attention to viewership patterns in individual local markets, and it's based on these ratings that television stations are able to set their local advertising rates. For that reason, networks always do their best to get as many viewers as possible to watch their shows during these sweep months.

Unfortunately for CSI fans, the November sweeps ended on Wednesday, and the results of this were immediately visible last Thursday, when CBS aired a repeat of the original CSI's "Viva Las Vegas." The show attracted 24.3 million viewers, down sharply from the 31.5 million that wast last week's "Mea Culpa" - but still more than enough to beat each other individual program airing that night. However, in the adults 18-49 category CSI just barely lost out to NBC's The Apprentice, which aired a new episode.

More information can be found in the Daily Variety reports for Monday and Thursday, and MediaWeek's Wednesday report.

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