Overnight Ratings: Grey's and October Road Bring Top Spot for ABC

Thanks to Grey's Anatomy and new drama, October Road, ABC won the 18-49 demo Thursday night in the prime time Nielsen ratings with a 5.2 rating/15 share, which is about 5.2 million viewers and 15% of all the TV's turned on during prime.

Grey's averaged an 8.5 rating/22 share at 9-10 p.m. to easily defeat CBS' CSI (3.3/9). CSI, however, was a repeat.

October Road won its time period with a 4.2/12, but it lost almost a full rating point from its first half- hour (4.7/13) to its second (3.8/11) after inheriting that huge Grey's lead-in audience.

CBS was second for thethanks to Survivor's time period-winning 4.4/13 at 8-9 p.m.

NBC was third, topped by ER at 10, followed by Fox with a 2.5/7, led by Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? at a 3.2/10 for second place at 8-9 p.m.

The CW averaged a 1.6/4, led by Smallville at a 1.7/5.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.