This is a discussion on TV: Thursday Ratings within the Entertainment forums, part of the Entertainment Forums category; This is surprising to me!
With the TV season over, the networks for the most part switched to a slate ...
With the TV season over, the networks for the most part switched to a slate of reruns Thursday, and surprisingly, CBS' crime dramas came out on top.
CBS averaged a 9.0 rating/16 share for the night, more than double that of second-place NBC, 4.4/8. ABC was third at 4.2/7, while UPN, the only net not to air repeats on the night, took fourth at 3.4/5. FOX averaged 2.5/4 and The WB 1.6/3.
CBS had that Tarantino/CSI thing going on, so it was bound to do big numbers. The Apprentice finale on NBC was a disjointed trainwreck (but yay, Kendra!) that I'm guessing many people turned off halfway through, if not sooner. That probably hurt for the lead-in to ER, which should have been bigger because it was Noah Wyle's last show (save for 4 appearances next season) so you think it would have done better. However...I don't think anyone has cared about ER for 3 or 4 seasons now, and considering how really, really, REALLY bad the writing has been over that period I guess the numbers it pulled were good, all things considered.