'Lost' Struggles, 'Lie To Me' Shaky

ABC's LostThe first big battleground of the New Year had ABC's season premiere of "Lost" in a down-to-the-wire battle with new Fox drama "Lie To Me." The bad news for ABC was that the two-hour premiere of "Lost" dropped 25% to a Nielsen Media Research preliminary 5.1/12 among 18-49 viewers--down from last season's 6.7 rating premiere.

The good news was that "Lost," which aired at 9 p.m., did not cave much against stiff competition: Fox's 8 p.m. "American Idol" leading into the network's 9 p.m. "Lie To Me." Overall, Fox easily won Wednesday, with a 7.5/18. ABC was second at a 4.5/11.

At 9 p.m., "Lie To Me" was in a virtual tie in preliminary results with "Lost" at a 5.2/13. "Lie To Me" benefited from a Lance Armstrong-like slipstream in the form of powerful "Idol" numbers, a 9.7/24. That means the new Fox drama kept a little more than 50% of "Idol" numbers--not bad considering other recent shows that start with "Idol" pulling in big crowds.

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On the flip side, "Lie To Me" dropped 24% in ratings from the first half hour to the second from a 5.9 to a 4.5, a sign that a good chunk of the show's new sampling viewers might not return in subsequent weeks.

"Idol" itself was dinged a little bit, losing steam to a merely powerful 9.7/24 from a superhuman 11.8/30 the week before. All this was the result of fresher programming on the night, versus many reruns the week before.

Prepping the new season premiere of "Lost," ABC offered an 8 p.m. highlight show, "Lost: Destiny Calls," which took in a decent 3.4/9.

At 10 p.m., it was clear sailing for ABC's "Lost"--it earned a 5.0/13 to CBS' "CSI: New York," which came in second at a 3.0/8. Overall, ABC scored a 4.5/11 for the night.

While Fox and ABC were battling it out, CBS landed in third place with a 2.9/7 for the night, with its best results coming from "Criminal Minds" at 9 p.m. at a 3.5/8.

NBC stayed on the sidelines most of the night with one-third of its schedule in reruns: a "Law & Order: SVU" repeat. At 8 p.m., a new episode of "Knight Rider" continued to underperform with a 1.5/4; while at 10 p.m., "Law & Order" produced a standard 2.5/6. NBC ended the night with a 1.9/5 average.

Univision was close to NBC at a 1.7/4, with its "Cuidado con el Angel" besting NBC's "Knight Rider" with a 1.9 rating to a 1.5 rating.

CW went with original reality-competition show "13: Fear is Real," earning a 0.5/1 and a repeat of "90210," which took in a 0.4/1.

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