MTV Lauren Conrad may be so over Heidi Montag, but teen girls aren't.
The Hills' fifth-season premiere scored Monday's highest TV rating among emotionally involved female types aged 12-24 and 18-24, per MTV stats this afternoon. Overall enthusiasm and/or tolerance for the reality show continues to wane, though. The back-to-back episodes averaged 3 million viewers, down about 15 percent from the season-four opener, which itself was down from the season-three-and-a-half opener, and so on.
Elsewhere Monday:
• House (13 million, per preliminary Nielsen estimates) shocked—and jumped up a bit from last week.
• Heroes (6.1 million) was down 30 percent from its season average among 18-49-year-olds who swear they TiVo'd.
• A downsized Dancing With the Stars (19.6 million) was still the biggest thing going on TV—men's college basketball championship game (17.2 million viewers from 9:30 p.m. to 11 p.m.) or no.
• The new comedy Surviving Suburbia (12.2 million) enjoyed debuting after DWTS—and not against Rules of Engagement, which had the night off because of basketball.
• Compared to last week, Castle (9.2 million) and Chuck (6 million) were up; 24 (11 million) and Medium (7.2 million) were about even. Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill were reruns.