• by Wayne Friedman , January 29, 2007

Fox's "Idol" may be grabbing headlines earlier in the week--but the later rounds still belong to ABC.

ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" continued its winning ways, scoring an 8.9/21. All that pulled ABC ahead of CBS with a 5.3/14 to CBS' 4.6/12.

ABC's "Men in Trees" also did better than its early-season Friday time slot outing--but it still sees a big drop in the lead-in "Anatomy" audience, with a 3.7/10. ABC started out the night with a repeat of "Ugly Betty" with a 3.3/9.

CBS' "CSI" again ran second-best to "Anatomy" with a 6.7/16.

At 10 p.m., its "Shark" won the time period--barely--over "Men in Trees" with a 3.8/10. Like "Trees" and "Anatomy," "Shark" also had trouble keeping the big "CSI" lead-out audience.

Farther down the list was NBC, which ran an entire night of repeats, ending up with a 2.7/10. Still, NBC won the 8 p.m. hour with its two comedies--"My Name is Earl" and "The Office"--over the other four networks, all virtually all in rerun mode. The exception was Fox at 8:30 p.m., with "The War at Home."

All this gave the CW some room to move, as it ran fresh programming all evening, with "Smallville" and "Supernatural." This put the network just ahead of Fox, with a 1.8/5 to Fox's 1.7/4.