• by Wayne Friedman , August 11, 2009

Fox took another summer victory lap for the week ending August 9, with its big-scoring hitters "Hell's Kitchen" and "So You Think You Can Dance".

Fox won with a Nielsen Media Research 2.0 rating/7 share among 18-49 viewers for the week. "Hell's "Kitchen" earned a 3.2/11 on Tuesday, and "So You Think Can Dance?" took a 3.5/11 for its Thursday edition. A two-hour version of "Dance" on Wednesday also earned a decent 2.8/9.

NBC came in at second place for the week with a 1.7/6 thanks to its top "America's Got Talent," which scored the best results of the week with a 3.6/11 among 18-49 viewers on Tuesday. The show's Wednesday edition also scored well, with a 2.9/9.

Later in the week, on Sunday, NBC earned a modest 2.9/8 for a pre-season NFL game between Buffalo and Tennessee. CBS was able to keep pace somewhat with "Big Brother" from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., which pulled in a 2.6/8.

But ABC really suffered for the night -- especially with the return of its "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?," which could only muster a 1.5/5 at 8 p.m. in its return to network television. New reality effort "Shark Tank" at 9 p.m. did a bit worse with a 1.3/4.

All this was not good news for ABC. The network scored 1.1/4 -- the lowest result ever among 18-49 viewers for a broadcast network. This is the third time this summer that ABC has lowered the bar. ABC has it particularly tough because reruns of serialized dramas don't pull in viewers.

This summer, ABC has only seen good results from "The Bachelorette" -- now off the air -- and "Wipeout", which recorded a solid 2.8/10 on Wednesday. Poorer reality shows results have come from "The Superstars," which only booked a 0.9/3 on Tuesday night.

CBS landed in third place with a 1.5/5 among 18-49 viewers. Its best results came from reruns of its comedies "Two and a Half Men" and "The Big Bang Theory," which earned a 2.8/8 and a 2.7/8, respectively.

MyNetworkTV was ahead of CW this particular week -- witb a 0.5/2 and a 0.4/1, respectively. Overall, the six English-language networks took in an average 1.3/4 for the week.