A few years ago, I wrote a story urging ABC to renew a freshman reality series called Shark Tank that had miserable ratings its first season and was on-the-bubble for a pickup. I wrote how the show is great, that this format has been a hit all over the world and could work here too if given another chance and a little polishing.

ABC stuck with the program, improved the judges panel (adding Mark Cuban really helped) and now here we are: The little-Shark-that-could has been regularly winning Friday nights this season (its first with a full 22-episode order), and last night night the show reached its biggest rating ever. Shark Tank had 7 million viewers and a 2.0 in the demo, all-time-highs in both total audience and 18-49. ABC faced a whole lot of repeats at 8 p.m., which helped.

After that first year, ABC took the same kind of leap-of-faith investment with Shark Tank that the show’s panelists take with struggling entrepreneurs. Its success proves you can have a business-based reality show that relies on practical and non-sexy concepts like math and entrepreneurial spirit rather than c-list celebrities selling cupcakes on Fifth Avenue and being fired by a pretend-boss (sorry Mark Burnett, I know you produce both, but this is the one to be proud of). READ FULL STORY »

ABC’s Shark Tank received some unlikely support last night from Snooki tweeting to her 4.4 million followers during the show’s East Coast telecast, “Totally into Shark Tank right now.” Hey, it couldn’t hurt, right? And perhaps her love of the business-based reality show isn’t too surprising since the endorsement-crazed Jersey Shore cast has more day-to-day dealing with various moneymaking ventures than most seasoned executives.

Whatever the reason, Shark Tank rose to win Friday night. The show had its best-ever Friday performance, with 5.9 million viewers and a 1.8 rating among adults 18-49.

Also last night: Fox’s Fringe wasn’t looking too hot. The cult favorite had 3 million viewers and a 1.1 rating in the demo, down a tenth from last week to place fourth in the 9 p.m. hour. A show can survive Fridays at a pretty low rating nowadays, but networks still aren’t fond of ranking last in a time slot. NBC’s Grimm (5.2 million, 1.6) was solid. The CW’s Nikita (1.4 million, 0.5) was unchanged and Supernatural (1.9 million, 0.7) was down a tick.