• by Wayne Friedman , January 7, 2011

Riding the big "Jersey Shore" wave, MTV's debut of the show's third season scored the network's best ratings ever for a TV series on its network. 

Thursday's season opener gelled and tanned its way to a Nielsen preliminary 8.4 million viewers -- almost 40% higher than the October second-season series finale of 6.1 million viewers. The show is the most-viewed series telecast ever on the network. Key 18-49 demographics have not been released yet, but it is destined to be over the 4.0 rating mark.

October's season finale earned a 3.1 rating among 18-49 viewers.

All this would be competitive to the broadcast networks' return of fresh programming on Thursday night in the new year. Here, CBS' "Big Bang Theory" topped all comers for the first Thursday in 2011 with a 4.4 rating/13 share among 18-49 viewers at 8 p.m; ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" earned a 4.2/11 at 9 p.m.; and ABC's crazy-sports competition show "Wipeout" pulled in with a 3.7/11 at 8:30 p.m. in its season debut.

The strong showing by ABC gave it a rare win on this Thursday for this season -- after a long run of wins on the night by CBS this past fall. For the night, ABC averaged a 3.6/10 among 18-49 viewers; CBS was at 3.4/9; NBC earned a 1.2/4; Fox and Univision both scored a 1.2/3; and CW took a 0.5/1.

The only other new TV programming of note was Fox's game show "Million Dollar Money Drop," which pulled in with a modest 1.4/4 during the 8 p.m. hour, up 8% from its most recent original episode.

"Shore" at 10 p.m. ran against CBS' "The Mentalist" and ABC's "Private Practice." Those network shows earned a 3.1/8 and 2.8/8 respectively among 18-49 viewers. NBC was in repeats with "The Office" during the hour, earning a 1.1/3.

While "Shore" earned the biggest numbers ever for an MTV series, the highest ratings for a single telecast on MTV came with the "The 2002 Video Music Awards," getting the music network 11.95 million overall viewers. This past year's 2010 "VMAs" earned 11.4 million overall viewers -- the third-largest telecast ever for MTV.