“House” & “Fringe” Put Fox Over the Top

Two networks have something to be very pleased about this week. Fox and CBS captured first and second with the Tuesday primetime ratings. Leading the charge for Fox was “House” followed by “Fringe.” For the night, “House” was the biggest winner over all other programming on any network, standard or cable.

CBS came in strong with “NCIS,” which returned with its season opener, and its newest entry “The Mentalist” did well (15.6 million viewers), putting CBS about 10% up over last years opening, but remained behind Fox.

The big loser of the night was NBC with the appropriately titled skein “The Biggest Loser.” However, it didn’t do as bad as ABC’s new game show “Opportunity Knocks.” The alphabet network closed the night out strong with its reliable “Dancing With the Stars,” but it still wasn’t enough to knock Fox from the Tuesday night throne. NBC closed out fair with the return of “Law & Order: SVU.” CBS also did well with the return of its staple “Without A Trace.”

The CW’s new version of “90210″ continues its weekly slippery slop into television oblivion. Also the one-time hopeful “Priviledged,” which got loads of young viewer buzz, isn’t doing as well as execs had hoped.

Even with the good showing at Fox and CBS, because of the rest of slow growth the overall decline of network viewing, the final results showed a fall of nearly 7% over the same time last year, proving again that network viewership continues its steady decline due to cable and new media’s pull on the one time exclusive TV network audience.