NBC's Monday Programming Continues To Slide

Only "Heroes" seemed to pull in similar audiences to its previous week on the network, picking up a 6.4 rating/9 share Monday, according to Fast National Ratings from Nielsen Media Research. That would be a slight uptick of a 0.1 rating based on estimated numbers from the previous week.

That forced "Heroes" to be well behind "Dancing With the Stars" and "The Bachelor" on ABC, which had a combined 10.9/16 for the 9 p.m. hour, while CBS earned an 8.1/12 and 6.8/10 respectively for its two comedies. "Heroes" did finish well ahead of possibly soon-to-be-canceled "K-Ville" as well as whatever The CW was airing.

It might be possible that NBC is not getting a good lead-in to "Heroes." "Chuck" drew only a 4.5/7, down about a half-rating point from last week's 5.1/8, according to Zap2it. While it was able to beat "Prison Break" on Fox in terms of households, the latter show had more viewers overall. Even then, "Chuck" still finished behind "Dancing" and a pair of comedies on CBS.

Finally, "Journeyman" took the biggest fall, going from a 5.2/9 last week to a 4.5/7 this week suffering heavily from competition such as "CSI: Miami" and "The Bachelor."

NBC settled for a third-place finish on the evening with a 5.1/8 with ABC winning with a 9.8/15 and CBS picking up a 7.4/11. Fox could only manage a 3.9/6.

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.

Talk about this story