'The Contender' Is No Match For 'Money Plane'

NBC was dealt a knock-out punch by CBS last week when a first-run episode of CSI: Miami helped relegate the much-hyped debut of The Contender to third place.

According to a report by Variety's Rick Kissell, last Monday's "Money Plane" was watched by 21.3 million viewers. It was an odd decision by CBS to air a new Miami episode that day, as the first week after a sweeps period usually is filled with nothing but reruns. But as was recently reported, CBS was so eager to hurt the new NBC show that it decided to re-arrange schedule so that on the final Monday of sweeps they aired a repeat of "Pirated," and that way had "Money Plane" left to enter the ring against The Contender.

CBS's gamble last week appeared to have paid off, as The Contender managed to attract no more than 8.4 million viewers. This meant the show was third in the 10:00pm timeslot, just behind ABC's Supernanny. But NBC still has a chance at turning The Contender into a hit: last Monday's episode was a special preview airing, and from now on the series will be shown in its regular timeslot on Sundays at 8:00pm.

Besides "Money Plane," CBS aired one more new CSI episode last week: the original CSI's "Compulsion." As usual, the show dominated its Thursday 9:00pm timeslot by attracting 29.5 million viewers, more than twice as many as watched NBC's The Apprentice. An hour later, CBS's Without a Trace was extremely successful too, being watched by 23.4 million people - its second-largest audience ever. Through this, CBS again managed to put the hurt on NBC, which had made the unfortunate decision to air the second preview episode of The Contender right opposite Without a Trace - but at least the 9.2 million viewers that watched the boxing show represented a slight improvement over its Monday viewership figures.

The final CSI episode to air last week was a repeat of New York's "American Dreamers," which was watched by only 11.2 million viewers. Although this was slightly less than the 11.9 million that watched a repeat of Law & Order, the situation was reversed in the important adults 18-49 demographic, where New York held a 5% edge.

More information last week's television ratings can be found in Variety's reports for Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.

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