• by Wayne Friedman , October 11, 2006

NBC's "Heroes" is a rare TV show. It comes out of nowhere, lands on TV schedules, and immediately clicks.

Like many of the characters, who find themselves with superhuman powers, the Monday night show's rating strength has been revealed--unexpectedly. Without a true lead-in, and without a strong network, "Heroes" has improved its 18-49 performance for the past two weeks. It is now up to a healthy 5.9--up 7 percent over the previous week's 5.5.

The mark of a good show is when it can improve on its lead-in, and "Heroes" has done it big-time. It improved on "Deal or No Deal" ratings by 34 percent on Monday. "Heroes" has become the best-rated new show for 18-49 viewers--with an average 5.8 rating for three shows. For the week of October 2, it is the ninth-best-rated 18-49 show overall, just one-tenth of a rating point behind "Survivor: Cook Islands."

With limited programming assets on the network, "Heroes" is already being pressed into action, helping out the surprisingly struggling "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." For the first time since its debut three weeks ago, "Studio 60" has seen its ratings climb--now up 9 percent to a 3.7, from a 3.4 for its previous outing.

All this good news lifted NBC to winning the evening--just barely beating out CBS--with a 4.7/12. CBS earned a 4.6/12. CBS improved considerably, however, because it flipped its 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. sitcoms. "How I Met Your Mother" led off the night with a 3.4/10 followed by "The Class," which shot up 25 percent to a 3.5/9 rating from a 2.8 number the week before.

ABC was a distant third with a 3.1/8. ABC had its season debut of "What About Brian," which only took in 3.0.8 for third place behind "Studio 60." This was just about the same level of interest in ABC's 9 p.m. show "The Bachelor: Rome," which earned a 3.1/7. Fox was in rerun mode for the evening, basically sitting on the sidelines because of its heavy involvement in October's baseball playoffs. It earned a 1.3/3.

The CW's move to bringing back its comedies--UPN comedies--to Monday night gave the networks a 1.0/3 for the night. Overall, The CW now says that for the first three weeks of the season, it is up 20 percent in 18-34 ratings versus the WB for the same time period, and 6 percent higher in adults 18-34 versus UPN.