Thanks mainly to the return of CBS’ surprise hit from last season, “The Big Bang Theory,” starring Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons, that network won the ratings war on Monday night with ABC and its return of “Dancing With the Stars” coming in at second.
The return of all-new episodes of two other CBS staple sitcoms, “How I Met Your Mother” and “Two and a Half Men” also kept the Eye center stage.
NBC’ “Heroes” opened softer than its two previous years openers but still held on. The lower turn out is probably due to the fact that the show had a nine month hiatus, even though the online webisodes and comic book did hold the interest of most fans during the layover.
Sadly, even though Fox’s “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” followed by the a new episode of “Prison Break” continue to show improvement with each episode shown, they made little impact on the Monday night numbers and barely held on to third place, just slightly over the much improved CW Network’s rise with younger viewers.
Of course the real news is the continued favor fans are showing “The Big Bang Theory.” This show has proven to be the network’s surprise crossover hit and continues to garner new viewers of every age, genre and demographic, including the all important adults 18-49 category.
“Heroes” began the season with a one-hour recap episode which gathered around 5 million viewers, one of the lowest in the show’s history, but its second hour, which featured an all-new episode, proved to be better capturing an additional 10.09 million watchers, giving its two-hour slot a combined 15.09 million in the 18-49 demographic. Not great by past “Heroes” standards but still solid enough to keep NBC happy. Overall, the show still ended up being the night’s top performer even though it slipped nearly 20% over last years totals.
NBC execs believe things will return to normal next week and will put them back on top of the first two hours of Monday when “Chuck” opens with its series premiere as the lead-in for “Heroes.” After that, they are hoping fans will stick around to view the network’s newest entry, the Christian Slater spy series “My Own Worst Enemy.”
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