'CSI' Leads CBS To Ratings Dominance

While last week's CSI: NY success could still have been attributed to curious first-time viewers, yesterday's "Creatures of the Night" proved it wasn't a fluke: CBS again solidly trounced NBC's Law & Order.

According to figures provided by Zap2It, the second CSI: New York episode scored a 12.3/20 rating, well above the 8.9/14 that Law & Order achieved. These ratings mean that out of all the households in America, 12.3% were tuned in to CSI: New York last night, as well as a full 20% of those households actually watching TV at 10:00pm. "Creatures of the Night" was the most-watched show of the night, both among overall viewers and in the important Adults 18-49 demographic, where the show scored a 6.9 rating.

An hour earlier, CBS aired a special encore presentation of the original CSI's "Paper or Plastic," in order to compensate for the Presidential Debate pre-empting tonigh's usual new episode. Even though this was a repeat, it still brought in a 10.8/16 rating for CBS, and performed better than new episodes of shows such as Lost and The Apprentice. Fueled by this success, CBS ended up winning Wednesday night in all important viewer categories.

On Monday night, CSI: Miami's "Pro Per" did manage to win the 10:00pm timeslot, but its 12.6/20 rating wasn't enough to become the most popular show of the night. That honour went to the Monday Night Football presentation on ABC, which helped the Alphabet Network just inch past CBS for a win in total household ratings.

Meanwhile, many news sources are reporting that CSI helped CBS to an important milestone last week. For the first time in 13 years, CBS became the most-watched network in the Adults 18-49 category during the premiere week of a new season. CBS attracted an average of 13.6 million viewers in primetime during the last week, well above the 10.6 million of second-place NBC.

The full ratings reports for and Monday and Wednesday can be found at Zap2It.

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