The Anna Nicole Show, the new reality series starring the former Playboy pinup turned Texas oil billionaire's widow, notched a 4.1 household rating in its 10 p.m. debut Sunday--the highest rating ever for the cable network, the best debut for a cable reality series and the second best debut for an original series on basic cable.
(E! Online is a division of E! Networks.)
All told, the curiosity factor gave Anna Nicole higher premiere ratings than MTV's The Osbournes, which nabbed a 2.8 household rating in its debut, before building up an audience throughout the season. For the record, the highest-rated original-series debut on cable belongs to USA Network's The Dead Zone, which pulled in a 4.7 in June.
The highest ratings, of course, came from Smith's hometown of Houston, where the show notched a whopping 9.7 rating.
Reality also ruled on the broadcast networks last week: NBC edged out CBS to win the weekly ratings race, thanks to summer programming like Dog Eat Dog, Fear Factor, Meet My Folks and the Peacock's latest entry in the battle of the lightweights, The Rerun Show.
Rerun, which features comics reenacting classic sitcom episodes (with a little sexual innuendo thrown in for good measure), pulled in 9.4 million viewers Thursday night. The show built on its Will & Grace lead-in audience despite competition from the number one show of the week, CBS' C.S.I. (15.6 million viewers).
Overall, NBC pulled in 7.92 million viewers, sliding past CBS' 7.91 million average. The Eye network's reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond (12.3 million) and Becker (11.2 million) remained in the top 10 again, while its reality spectacle Big Brother 3 remained a strong performer on Wednesday (10 million viewers) and Thursday (8.6 million).
Fox finished in fourth place for the week ended August 4, but it still has one of the biggest summer hits in American Idol, which saw both of its episodes in Nielsen's top 10. The pop-wannabe series remains number one on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, averaging 12.2 million viewers and 10.2 million, respectively.
Finally, ABC held on to third place, but its most watched shows came from the network's news division--Primetime Thursday (14th place, 9.5 million viewers) and 20/20 (21st place, 8.7 million). As evidence that the Mickey Mouse network is willing to try anything to lure back viewers, ABC announced Tuesday it will begin broadcasting reruns of USA Network's original detective series Monk, starting August 13 at 9 p.m.
Yes, that's right. ABC will air reruns of a cable show--in an attempt to boost ratings.
Usually, it works the other way around: A network airs an original episode before feeding it to a sister cable network for "repurposing." But Monk, starring Tony Shalhoub, is scoring critical acclaim and decent ratings for USA, and it pulled in a healthy 4.9 million viewers last Friday.
By comparison, Sunday's rerun of ABC's Alias pulled in just 3.6 million viewers, so they might as well try the reverse approach. "This is an interesting programming development experiment," said ABC Entertainment president Susan Lyne, "and there's no better time of year to try something different."
And there's no better network on which to try it.
Here's a rundown of the week's top 10 among total viewers, according to Nielsen:
1. C.S.I., CBS, 15.6 million viewers
2. Everybody Loves Raymond, CBS, 12.3 million
3. 48 Hours (Monday), CBS, 12.3 million
4. American Idol (Tuesday), Fox, 12.2 million
5. Law & Order, NBC, 12.1 million
6. Dog Eat Dog, NBC, 11.7 million
7. Becker, CBS, 11.2 million
8. 60 Minutes, CBS, 10.9 million
9. Dateline, NBC, 10.8 million
10. American Idol (Wednesday), Fox, 10.2 million