Disney's 'Hannah,' 'Derby' Grab Cable Attention

Disney Channel scored a big result from a special crossover episode of its big series "Wizards of Waverly Place," "The Suite Life on Deck," and "Hannah Montana" -- for the week ending July 19.

With 9.29 million average viewers, the show "Wizards on Deck with Hannah Montana" on Friday, July 17, grabbed the highest results for a 2009 scripted cable show.

Other older-skewing cable programming also continued to score well, including ESPN's special "Home Run Derby" -- part of Major League Baseball's All Star event, which came in second place to the Disney show with 8.25 million. ESPN's "Home Run Derby Prelude" came in seventh place at 6.06 million.

The summer's other big-scripted shows targeting adults continued to draw crowds, improving over numbers of a week ago. "Burn Notice" from USA Network landed in third place for the week with 6.66 million viewers; TNT's "The Closer" had 6.59 million viewers; and USA's new summer drama "Royal Pains" had 6.23 million viewers.

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Good news for USA Network's longtime WWE programming: It picked up the pace with higher numbers versus the week before. WWE's "Raw" 10 p.m. show on Monday (8th place) had 5.52 million viewers, while WWE's 9 p.m. "Raw" show, also on Monday, had 4.93 million (13th place).

Nickelodeon's nine "SpongeBob" editions occupied a big chunk of cable's top 20 list of programs, with its best result getting to 9th place with 5.37 viewers for its Sunday evening 9 p.m. program. Its worst result came with its Saturday morning 11 a.m. show, with 4.46 million viewers.

Rank

Programs

Net

Day

Time

Viewers (Live+SD) (000s)

1

WIZARDS ON DECK W/ HANNAH

DSNY

Fri

08:00P-09:30P

9,292

2

2009 HOME RUN DERBY

ESPN

Mon

08:18P-11:09P

8,250

3

BURN NOTICE

USA

Thu

09:00P-10:00P

6,664

4

THE CLOSER

TNT

Mon

09:00P-10:00P

6,590

5

ROYAL PAINS

USA

Thu

10:00P-11:00P

6,230

6

HANNAH MONTANA

DSNY

Fri

09:30P-09:55P

6,086

7

HOME RUN DERBY PRELUDE

ESPN

Mon

08:00P-08:18P

6,065

8

WWE ENTERTAINMENT

USA

Mon

10:00P-11:08P

5,523

9

SPONGEBOB

NAN

Sun

09:00P-09:30P

5,373

10

SPONGEBOB

NICK

Sun

08:30P-09:00P

5,169

11

SPONGEBOB

NICK

Sun

07:30P-08:00P

5,088

12

SPONGEBOB

NICK

Sun

08:00P-08:30P

4,952

13

WWE ENTERTAINMENT

USA

Mon

09:00P-10:00P

4,927

14

SPONGEBOB

NICK

Sun

07:00P-07:30P

4,851

15

SPONGEBOB

NAN

Sun

09:30P-10:00P

4,675

16

SPONGEBOB

NICK

Sat

10:30A-11:00A

4,674

17

SPONGEBOB

NICK

Sat

10:00A-10:30A

4,470

18

SPONGEBOB

NICK

Sat

11:00A-11:30A

4,460

19

NCIS

USA

Mon

08:00P-09:00P

4,290

20

HANNAH MONTANA

DSNY

Fri

07:30P-08:00P

4,219


Nielsen Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved

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