• by Wayne Friedman , November 2, 2005

USA Network's investment in getting back wrestling has done the trick for its October ratings.

After a five-year absence, World Wrestling Entertainment returned to USA with its "Raw" program. It immediately helped the network witness a 23 percent jump in viewers to 2.46 million viewers in prime time. For the last week of October, "Raw" at 9 p.m. came in as the fourth-ranked show at 4.8 million; "Raw"'s 10 p.m. version pulled in 4.7 million.

But all this didn't win prime time for USA for October among advertiser-supported networks; it came in second. ESPN grabbed the top spot, thanks to its big-rated sports programming, "Sunday Night Football" and Major League Baseball. ESPN's viewer numbers rose 16 percent to 2.87 million in prime time. ESPN also had the biggest program overall in October--the Buffalo Bills-New England Patriots game, which pulled in a hefty 9.7 million total viewers.

Third place went to TNT, grabbing 2.15 million viewers--up 11 percent. Lifetime took the next position at 1.79 million--improving 4 percent versus a year ago. Lifetime was aided by its "Human Trafficking" mini-series, which averaged 5.45 million viewers and ranked it as the second and third best-rated cable shows for the last week of October.

Last year, Spike had WWE wrestling programming, which ran on the network for five years. October's results partially speak to that loss: the network fell 16 percent in the month to 1.33 million viewers.

Other notables: Hallmark Channel skyrocketed to a new level, a 59 percent gain to 912,000 viewers; MTV improved 8 percent to 1.0 million; The Cartoon Network fell 7 percent to 1.6 million; A&E was off 8 percent to 1.0 million; and Nick at Nite slipped 10 percent to 1.7 million. Other Viacom networks gained: VH1 was up 34 percent to 649,000 viewers; BET witnessed a 9 percent gain to 609,000 viewers.

After September's big ratings gains for cable news networks resulting from the hurricane coverage, those networks' viewership numbers came back to earth--and fell somewhat in year-to-year comparisons. Fox was off 29 percent to 1.72 million viewers; CNN was down 21 percent to 824,000 viewers; MSNBC slipped 28 percent to 359,000. But programming changes at Headline News helped perk up numbers 78 percent, to 366,000 viewers.