• by Wayne Friedman , September 17, 2009

Day three of NBC's "The Jay Leno Show" continued with strong ratings -- actually improving a bit. But TV program researchers don't believe those numbers will hold.

While it was expected he would lose viewership from day one to day two, Wednesday's results for NBC's new 10 p.m. Monday to Friday show were somewhat eye-opening. Ratings climbed from Tuesday -- landing at a Nielsen preliminary 3.4 rating/10 share, up a tick from the night before.

Bigger news was that its total viewers climbed from 2 million viewers to 13.1 million. Much of Leno's still strong numbers probably came from the season finale lead-in of NBC's top-rated "America's Got Talent." The show earned a 3.5/10 from adults 18-49 and 15.5 million viewers -- the latter a series record.

Industry analysts also note there is still a lot of sampling going on for the "Leno" show in its first week. Plus, "Leno" has been going up against mostly rerun programming during the 10 p.m. time period so far.

For CW, Wednesday night proved to be a tough one. A new series from Ashton Kutcher about the lives of young models, "The Beautiful Life," didn't elicit any ratings beauty.

It tallied 1.462 million viewers and a tiny 0.7/2 with adults 18-49. More importantly, key younger viewers did not show up -- with a 0.8/2 among adults 18-34, and a 1.1/3 for its more core women 18-34 viewers.

But another new show, Fox's new musically minded "Glee," keeps rolling along. A nice 3.1/8 for adults 18-49 was reached on Wednesday, just a 6% drop from the week before. It pulled a 3.5/10 among adults 18-34, at a smaller 3% drop than the previous week. Earlier in the night, Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance?" took in lower than normal numbers, with a 2.5/7 -- possibly because of the "Talent" season finale.

ABC's best came from its sturdy summer competition show "Wipeout," at a 2.1/7. But the rest of the night was lower: Both "Crash Course" and "Primetime: Family Secrets" each earned a 1.4/4.

For the night overall, NBC grabbed a 3.5/10, easily ahead of second-place Fox at a 2.7/8. NBC was further ahead of Fox when it came to overall viewers -- more than doubling Fox's numbers, at 14.7 million versus 6.2 million.

In the rest of the 18-49 race for the night, Univision and ABC scored a 1.7/5; CBS earned a 1.6/5, and the CW finished with a 1.0/3.