Viewers Flock To 'Movies'

See Also: 'A Night At The Movies' Episode Guide

The prospect of "A Night At The Movies" lured Americans to CBS on Thursday night.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation's latest episode scored an 18.6 rating / 27 share, according to overnight figures published at Mediaweek. This means approximately 18.6% of American households with television sets were tuned into CSI, while the episode was viewed by 27% of households watching television at the time.

The episode easily eclipsed "Precious Metal" to score the best overnight figures since "Crash and Burn" achieved a 19.5/28 on March 13. Based on this preliminary data, "A Night At The Movies" is likely to be the second most-watched CSI episode thus far in 2003.

"A Night At The Movies" was the entertainment of choice for the night, with NBC's comedy double of Will & Grace (9.1/13) and Good Morning, Miami (7.16/11) a distant second in the 9:00 p.m. timeslot. UPN put the Smackdown for third place with a 4.4/6, followed by ABC's Whose Line Is It Anyway? (3.2/5) and The Pulse (2.9/4) on Fox. The WB brought up the rear with The Jamie Kennedy Experiment and On The Spot scoring averages of 2.3/3 and 1.8/3, respectively.

CSI and its CBS compatriots, Survivor: Amazon and Without A Trace, were rated as the night's "winners" by media analyst Marc Berman. Amazon washed away the competition to take the 8:00 p.m. hour with an 11.8/18, while at 10:00 p.m. Without A Trace (12.2/19) ensured other networks' audiences vanished into thin air.

CBS won Thursday with a 14.2/21 average, leaving NBC (9.4/14) in the dust. Third place UPN was even further behind with a 4.4/6, followed by ABC (4.0/6), Fox (3.3/5) and the WB (2.1/3).

The original ratings report is available here at Mediaweek.

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