Thursday ratings: 'Talent' is tops, repeats rule

While the networks’ fall TV season is starting to come to life on other nights of the week, Thursday is still rife with repeats and a few holdovers from the summer. The top show of the summer, NBC’s America’s Got Talent, aired yet another episode last night to reveal its wacky Top 10 acts. The half-hour easily won the whole night with 9.6 million viewers. It was up against repeats of ABC’s Ugly Betty (4.3 million) and The CW’s Smallville (2 million), as well as a new episode of CBS’s Big Brother (7.9 million) and the premiere of Fox’s silly new gameshow Hole in the Wall (4.5 million). A preview of the series, which already ran on Sunday and Tuesday this week, pulled in 7.0 and 5.1 million viewers, respecitively.

The 9 p.m. hour was also ruled by repeats: CBS’s CSI (9 million) topped ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy (5.4 million), two episodes of NBC’s The Office (both 4.5 million), and The CW’s Supernatural (1.7 million). The only new entry was from Gordon Ramsay on the season premiere of Fox’s restaurant-makeover show Kitchen Nightmares, which snagged 6.1 million viewers, an 8 percent slide compared to 6.6 million viewers for last year’s premiere. (Nightmares doesn’t nearly reach the heights of Ramsay’s other series on Fox, Hell’s Kitchen, which averaged 10.9 million viewers in its April through July run this year.)

Finally, at 10 p.m., CBS won with its surprise summer hit, Canadian import Flashpoint, which drew 8.6 million viewers while up against repeats of ABC’s Private Practice (4.9 million), and 30 Rock (3.3 million) and The Office (3.1 million) on NBC.