• by Wayne Friedman , March 12, 2007

Those shocking numbers from Fox's "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" last week continued to dazzle, although with slightly less wattage.

"Smarter" pulled in a hefty 8.0 in adults 18-49 ratings at 9 p.m. on Thursday, following a special airing of "American Idol." It crushed the competition--albeit against mostly rerun programming. "Idol" delivered its usual bone-crunching 10.3/28 rating.

Here's the somewhat bad news: "Smarter" was down 15% from its eye-popping 9.4 average rating of the previous week. "Smarter" retained 78% of the "Idol" lead-in, versus a 90% number a week ago.

Still, you can't go wrong with an 8.0 rating. A network game show hasn't hit these kinds of levels since "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire" about seven years ago.

At 9 p.m., "Smarter" easily bested repeats of "CSI" on CBS, which grabbed a 4.3/11 and "Grey's Anatomy" on ABC, which sank to a 3.0/7.

The real test for "Smarter" comes next Thursday, when it moves to its permanent 8 p.m. time slot--a night when Fox has woefully scheduled anemic-rated sitcoms and the last remnants of "The O.C." All this will wreak some havoc against CBS' "Survivor," ABC's "Ugly Betty" and NBC's sitcoms.

On Thursday night, NBC ran mostly repeat sitcoms--except for the 9 p.m. hour with "Scrubs," which grabbed a 2.8/7 among 18-49 viewers, and "30 Rock," which took in a 2.5/6. For the night, among 18-49 viewers, Fox had a 9.2/24; CBS, 4.0/11; NBC, 2.4/6; ABC 2.2/6; Univision, 1.7/5; and CW, 0.9/2.