Friday Ratings: 'Fringe' Steady in Second Week
Fox's decision to move Fringe to Fridays is paying off.
In its second week, the sci-fi drama received a 1.9 rating in the 18-49 demo, remaining steady from its winter return. Though it drew 4.6 million, down from the previous week (4.9 million), this is still a good showing for the series. "Reciprocity" was also the highest-rated program of the night, tied with the second hour of NBC's Dateline at 10 p.m.
Fringe's lead-in, Kitchen Nightmares, dropped two-tenths from its premiere to snag a 1.7 and was down (4 million) in viewership, but with help from Fringe, Fox won Friday.
Fringe may have received some help from its competitors. The CW decided to push the returns of Smallville and Supernatural back one week so their Thursday night dramas, The Vampire Diaries and Nikita, could receive more sampling since it was the first week the two were up against American Idol. Both, however, ended up performing solidly in their time slots.
The CW's last-minute reair of Diaries and Nikita drew 1.3 million and 1.1 million viewers, respectively.
The rest of the networks were mostly in reruns, with ABC airing What Would You Do? (4.6 million, 1.3) and 20/20 (5.9 million, 1.7), and NBC airing Dateline (7.3 million, 1.8).
CBS topped Friday in total viewers (7.7 million) with Fox placing fourth (4.3 million).
