CBS ruled on Tuesday night with the season’s second episodes of NCIS (which retained its entire premiere audience), spinoff NCIS: Los Angeles (which dropped only a million viewers), and new drama The Good Wife (which lost only 300,000). For ABC, the Dancing With the Stars results show dropped 3 million viewers from last week’s Wednesday-night elimination episode, which could have contributed to The Forgotten‘s dip as well: The 10 p.m. Christian Slater procedural lost 2 million viewers from its debut last Tuesday. Meanwhile, Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance continued to perform below its usual summer standard against competition from Dancing and NCIS at 9 p.m.
Here’s a breakdown of Tuesday’s numbers. Check out our recaps of six shows, below the table.
| Time | Show | Viewers (in millions) |
| 8:00 p.m. | NCIS (CBS) The Biggest Loser (NBC) Hell’s Kitchen (Fox) Shark Tank (ABC) 90210 (The CW) |
20.6 8.5 6.5 5.3 2.5 |
| 9:00 | NCIS: Los Angeles (CBS) Dancing With the Stars: The Results (ABC) The Biggest Loser (NBC) So You Think You Can Dance (Fox) Melrose Place (The CW) |
17.4 12.5 9.6 (continued) 5.3 1.5 |
| 10:00 | The Good Wife (CBS) The Forgotten (ABC) The Jay Leno Show (NBC) |
13.4 7.5 6.6 |
Read more:
‘Dancing With the Stars’ results recap: On a roll
‘The Biggest Loser’ recap: Hate the game
‘Hell’s Kitchen’ recap: Yes we can? No, they can’t
‘So You Think You Can Dance’ recap: The real dancers of Atlanta
‘Melrose Place’ recap: Jane’s back in black(mail)
‘The Good Wife’ week 2: Do you still think it’s good?
Has NCIS earned itself an EW cover yet?
It has in my eyes and heart.
Me too
They should get a cover, get an Emmy, etc. They totally deserve it! Maybe the first episode of this season can be nominated for the script or whatever they do that for….it rocked the T.V.
How about at least its own TV Watch? Come on guys, doesn’t 20 million viewers deserve SOMETHING? And Michael Weatherly totally deserves an Emmy nod this year.
NCIS doesn’t need an EW cover.
youre right, EW needs an NCIS cover.
correct, EW needs an NCIS cover
NCIS LA is a pile of rubbish with non credible trendy wanker actors, it’s hard to imagine any Federal agency staffing it’s operations with this lot of losers
Isn’t it obvious why CBS dominates on Tuesdays? Because the other networks almost exclusively air reality show garbage on Tuesdays. If any other network wanted to make an impact, it would move some of its better shows to Tuesdays. I’m thinking something along the lines of FOX moving Fringe there.
No, I watch Fringe too, and I would rather see NCIS if I had to choose one. They are better off losing Tuesday night to CBS, then losing viewers. And the fans of NCIS would not pass to watch Fringe instead. But I agree with you about the crap reality TV.
Nope, I smell a Vampire Diaries cover coming anytime soon. EW needs to stay focused on their losing credibility streak.
Mike, Fringe WAS on Tuesday nights last season.
Why is nothing else on Tuesday? Come Spring, American Idol on Fox has been ruling Tuesdays!
NCIS still holds its own against Idol. It will be hard this year, as it seems Netflix is no longer streaming episodes of NCIS anymore.
I agree with you Mike. I literally watch nothing on Tuesdays and yet I had to drop 3 shows I watched last season because of overcrowding on other nights.
NCIS is on fancast.com.
Fringe WAS on Tuesday nights…last season…scheduled against The Mentalist. Both shows were moved to different times on Thursday nights.
I vote YES! It’s LONG overdue!
I agree with you Mike. Please put Fringe back on Tuesday. Thursday at 9 is a cluster&&&&
So you think you can dance on regular season schedule is mistake and needs to go. I also say bring back fringe and some other show to go with it proper!
I disagree. Once they get finish the auditions, it will bring more viewers. Never saw Fringe, not a SciFi junkie.
They can’t very well just abort the whole season now. They won’t try this again though.
SYTYCD should never have tried fall season. The auditions have been very boring and I don’t see much hope for the top 20 shows. They should have kept it to the summer. I have too much else to watch or record and no time for it.
ABC’s problem is finding a lead on Tuesday. Shark Tank is a show that works when there’s nothing much else on.
NCIS’ success is impressive, however it has the weakest timeslot imaginable. Friday nights are better than the first hour of Tuesday primetime for goodness sakes. I don’t watch any of it.
I’m pleased that this years shows are doing so well (except NBC- no surprise), and that folks are watching good shows.
I hope they give Defying Gravity time to gather an audience. I came to the show prepaired to hate it. It’s better than a lot of the junk ABC has on.
Still NCIS:LA is dipping from its lead in. I don’t think it’s nearly as good as the other…looks like some others agree.
And would someone please put Jay Leno out of our misery?
I don’t understand why MP is still on when it has such low numbers. That other CW show (with Mischa Barton) was dropped after two low rated episodes and yet MP is still on. Baffles me.
If there’s no improvement when Heather guest stars, CW will axe it.
Its 2009 and the new must see TV is Tuesdays on CBS.
NCIS is only so strong because it’s the only thing that can be strong against American Idol, so it’s the only thing that was left on Tuesdays. I’d like to see it get 20 million on Mondays in the same timeslot. (I love the show, I just hate that everyone decided to move things to Monday so they won’t have to compete with AI, and now they all have middling ratings and people are saying fewer people are watching. Of course they are, every single network put their strongest shows on Monday!)
I’m with Interesting. Where is the “NCIS” cover. And no, not a joint cover with “NCIS: Los Angeles” – a cover all their own with the entire cast! They all deserve to be on.
I’ve known for years just how good this show is and it’s thrilling to see the ratings reflect my belief.
I agree with you SWThompson. If the head math I’m doing as I write is correct, ABC actually finished 2nd in total viewers to CBS despite the lack of a strong lead show at 8pm. A great show at 8pm would greatly change their outlook on the night. CBS is off the charts great in comparison to everybody else but give NBC some credit for actually having a show that came close to averaging 10 million viewers. Man, what are they going to do once football season is over? LOL