'Miami' Comes Top Of Its Class

By Caillan
May 29, 2003 - 11:47 AM

See Also: 'Body Count' Episode Guide

While CSI: Crime Scene Investigation was the most popular show on television last season, its offspring, CSI: Miami, was no slouch either, earning the title of the most-watched new series.

An average of 16.57 million viewers followed the investigations of Horatio Caine and his team, Zap2it reported. CSI: Miami was the fifth most-watched series on CBS, after CSI, this season's two Surivors and Everybody Loves Raymond. It ranked 14th out of 181 primetime shows on the six terrestrial networks.

May 19's 75-minute season finale, "Body Count", attracted the most viewers since September, 2002. The finale scored a 12.0 rating / 19 share, which translated into an audience of 19.3 million. Only two episodes had more viewers: "Losing Face", which was watched by 19.8 million viewers, and the premiere, "Golden Parachute", which attracted an audience of 23.1 million.

A breakdown of the final ratings for each of CSI: Miami's May sweeps episodes can be found below, based on figures provided by the Futon Critic:

April 28: "Spring Break" - Rowdy college kids got CSI: Miami off to a strong sweeps start, with the episode achieving a 11.6/19. "Spring Break" was watched by 17.2 million Americans.
May 5: "Tinder Box" - CSI: Miami smoked out the competition, easily winning its hour with a 9.7/15. However, these figures were down from the previous week, with 14.5 million viewers tuning in, almost 3 million fewer than the audience for "Spring Break". This was most likely because of increased competition from the season finales of Crossing Jordan and The Practice.
May 12: "Freaks and Tweaks" - Ratings rose again the following week, with "Freaks and Tweaks" scoring exactly the same numbers as "Spring Break": an 11.6/19 rating and 17.2 million viewers.
May 19: "Body Count" - This special 75-minute presentation, which followed the season finale of Everybody Loves Raymond, scored CSI: Miami's third-best ratings for the season. 19.3 million Americans tuned in to watch the team tracked down three escaped convicts.