'Chuck,' 'Heroes' Gaining Audience

"Heroes" earned a 6.8 rating/10 share according to Fast National ratings from Nielsen Media Research, doing better than the 6.4/9 it earned last week, and helping it to beat the baseball playoffs on Fox.

"Heroes" had a considerable amount of competition, especially from ABC, which had its last half-hour of "Dancing With the Stars" as well as the series premiere of "Samantha Who?" -- one of the best series premieres so far this season -- that clobbered the 9 p.m. ET competition.

Comedies apparently still rule on CBS as "Two and a Half Men" and "Rules of Engagement" earned an 8.9/13 and a 7.0/10 respectively.

Some of that could've come from a bit stronger lead-in from "Chuck" in the 8 p.m. ET hour. That show drew an audience of 5.0/7, up half a rating point over last week's performance, and actually beating out "How I Met Your Mother" and "The Big Bang Theory" on CBS in terms of viewers. Everything in the hour, however, was beat by "Dancing With the Stars," and the first hour of the American League Championship Series on Fox.

"Journeyman" isn't doing too well in the 10 p.m. hour, however. The "Quantum Leap"-like show earned an identical rating to what it had the previous week, a 4.5/7, showing a drop of more than 4 million viewers from its "Heroes" lead-in. It was handedly beat by "CSI: Miami" on CBS and "The Bachelor" on ABC.

NBC could only manage a fourth-place ranking for the night with a 5.4/8, behind ABC's 10.3/16, CBS' 7.9/12 and Fox's 6.5/10, according to Zap2it.

NBC did do better in terms of adults 18 to 49, finishing in third place just behind CBS and well ahead of Fox.

Fast Nationals usually provide a snapshot of what Americans are watching by pulling numbers from the top urban markets that includes both live viewing and same-day timeshifted viewing. A rating point generally represents more than 1.1 million households while the share indicates the percentage of televisions turned on that was tuned to the specific program. These numbers typically shift when final ratings are issued.

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