'Moonlight' Is Here To Stay, It Seems

The show that many critics had written off as dead before it even aired its first episode seems to be not only holding its own, but sucking away its competitors -- even among genre shows -- after yet another audience uptick this past weekend.

"Moonlight" earned a 5.4 rating/10 share according to Fast National Ratings from Nielsen Media Research, topping the 5.1/9 it earned the previous week. It finished behind "Women's Murder Club" on ABC, which had a 6.1/11, but was well ahead of "Friday Night Lights" on NBC and "Smackdown!" on The CW, an whatever Fox was showing.

That is showing a strong lead-out from "Ghost Whisperer" in the 8 p.m. ET timeslot, Zap2it reports, which had a 6.2/11 versus "Deal or No Deal" on NBC. "Moonlight" isn't retaining all of "Ghost Whisperer's" audience, but despite the demo shift between the two shows, it's not doing a bad job at all against "Women's Murder Club."

Those ratings were enough to move "Moonlight" into third place among all the currently airing genre shows for the fifth week of the season, finishing behind season lows from "Heroes" and "Pushing Daisies," but finishing ahead of "Bionic Woman," "Chuck" and "Journeyman." "Bionic Woman" only managed a 4.8/7 this past week.

"Smallville" is still slipping for The CW on Thursdays. The Superman show finished with a 2.8/4, down from last week's 3.1/5 (which was a season high) to finish last in its timeslot. "Supernatural" also was down in the lead-out.

For Thursday night, The CW finished last with a 1.7/3, placing well behind Fox (10.1/16), CBS (8.7/14), ABC (8.2/13) and NBC (5.1/8). On Friday, CBS -- fueled by "Moonlight" -- won the evening with a 5.9/11 ahead of NBC's 5.2/9. ABC, The CW and Fox brought up the tail end.

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.

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