30 Rock got The Office. Parks and Recreation got the shaft—and made the best of it.
The Tina Fey comedy parlayed its strong Office lead-in (8.2 million viewers, per preliminary Nielsen estimates) into a strong Thursday of its own (7.3 million).
Amy Poehler's Parks and Rec saw its audience fall by about 1 million viewers from last week's Office-boosted premiere (5.9 million versus 6.9 million). Still, the show continued to be an upgrade over NBC's former 8:30 p.m. occupant, Kath & Kim, and built on new lead-in My Name Is Earl's audience (5.3 million) by 11 percent.
Elsewhere Thursday:
• The Office was the night's No. 1 show among adults 18-49. A smallish CSI, by CSI standards, scored the biggest audience: 15.4 million.
• Southland (9.6 million) continued to impress and continued to put up numbers for NBC at 10 p.m. that two nights' worth of Jay Leno may not be able to match.
• From the department of What Have You Done for Me Lately?: Bones (8.7 million) was down about 2 million viewers from the previous night.
• Survivor: Tocantins (11.6 million) dominated the 8 p.m. hour, which itself was dominated by the unwatched likes of In the Motherhood (4.7 million).
• Hell's Kitchen (8 million) posted its biggest audience of the season on a non-American Idol night, Fox said.