No Sophomore Slump for Glee; Little Let Up from NCIS

Buzz show's back with killer premiere-night ratings; NCIS and Dancing With the Stars big, too

By Joal Ryan Sep 22, 2010 6:17 PMTags
Glee, NCIS, DWTSAdam Rose/FOX; Sonja Flemming/CBS; ABC/Adam Larkey

Glee lived up to the hype. NCIS lived up to its legacy. Dancing With the Stars lost a star, but not a step.

A ratings rundown of Tuesday's season premieres: 

NCIS (18.9 million viewers, per prelim estimates) : The night's most-watched show. Per usual. If it was a bit down from last fall, then remember its competition at 8 p.m. was way up.

Glee (12.3 million): Meet the competition. Its second-season opener was the night's most-watched show—by far—among the cool kids. (Yeah, so much for the storyline spin that New Directions is as unhip as ever.) 

Dancing With the Stars results episode (18.3 million): Since it's hard to believe the masses were just dying to see Kyle Massey eliminated, we'll chalk up the franchise's most-watched results premiere ever to the franchise being on a roll.

NCIS: LA (15.7 million): With DWTS up, this sophomore show was off by about 2.5 million viewers from last fall's series premiere. But still big. Obviously.

Detroit 187 (9.8 million): Remember The Forgotten? It did a better job holding onto its DWTS lead-in than this freshman cop show, which actually did OK—it just didn't have The Jay Leno Show to kick around at 10 p.m.

Raising Hope (7.5 million) and Running WIlde (5.9 million): Compared to Lone Star, these Fox newbies did great. And Raising Hope, in particular, did a solid job in a tough time slot. But a year ago, a mid-season Hell's Kitchen was even more solid in the 9 p.m. slot—and without a Glee-ful lead-in. 

The Biggest Loser (7.2 million): Did its thing. 

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