Broadcast TV Ratings for Wednesday, October 4, 2006

Though down from last seasons premiere, Lost (and a strong performance by Dancing) gives ABC the Wednesday night win.

ABC finished first for the evening with a 10.1/16 HH rating (16.07M viewers) and in A18-49, delivering a 5.5/15 rating in that demo.

• LOST premieres down 25% in A18-49 (from a 10.0 to a 7.5) from last seasons premiere, but on par with its season finale last May with 18.82M viewers (also down from the premieres 23.47M). Won the evening in total viewers and A18-49.
• The Nine, like Invasion last season, lost a good amount of Lost’s lead-in, averaging a 4.6 in A18-49 and 11.91M viewers. The best the show can hope for is that it stays consistent at this rate or picks up viewers. Invasion lost less of LOST’s lead-in last season, but would continue to slide every week.

CBS followed in second place with an 8.9/14 HH rating (13.92M viewers), and a 4.1/11 A18-49 rating.

• Jericho is holding on strongly with 10.83M viewers, down only slightly from last week against stiff competition (ABC’s Dancing Results Show registered its largest audience thus far of the season–17.49M).
• Criminal Minds continues to impress, averaging 15.19M viewers against the premiere of Lost for a strong second in the time-period.

FOX finished in third place with a 5.5/8 HH rating (8.50M viewers), and a 3.0/8 A18-49 rating.

• The only thing worthy of noting is that a repeat of House led out of a new Bones and performed better (8.89M viewers to 8.10M viewers).

NBC followed in fourth for the evening delivering a 3.9/6 HH rating (5.59M viewers) and a 2.2/6 A18-49 rating.

• Perhaps in an effort to get a few more eyeballs to the show, NBC scheduled a repeat of the Friday Night Lights premiere–3.3/5 (1.7) -4.44M viewers.
• The supposedly canceled (NBC has yet to confirm its status) Kidnapped averaged 5.15M viewers over the hour.

The CW finished in fifth for the evening delivering a 2.9/4 HH rating (4.17M viewers) and a 2.1/6 A18-49 rating.

• America’s Next Top Model does well, registering a very respectable 3.7/6 (2.7)–5.25M Viewers.
• But One Tree Hill has a hard time holding on to that audience–2.1/3(1.5)–3.09M Viewers, however its target demo A18-34 remains unchanged from the previous week (2.0)

Source: Fast National Numbers from Nielsen Media Research

The ratings for all the programs that aired last night are viewable below in chart form (click to enlarge):