• by Wayne Friedman , April 16, 2007

With ABC mostly sitting on the sidelines, CBS easily won Thursday, posting No. 1 positions for each of its shows. CBS' biggest victory was its first 10 p.m. win for its rookie show "Shark" over NBC's long-time player and this year's comeback kid, "ER." "Shark" pulled in a 3.9 rating/11 share among 18-49 viewers. "ER," with an original episode, posted a 3.7/10.

NBC might have been hurt somewhat by a special--and unusual--double episode preview at 10 p.m. of the new ABC comedy "Notes From the Underbelly," which pulled in an average 3.6/10 for the two shows--a nice number, which also held onto 74% of "Grey's Anatomy" lead-in.

The downside to all this was that ratings for "Shark" didn't really grow. Rather, they were in line with its recent seasonal average. "ER," on the other hand, was shot down with its lowest first-run score in 13 seasons.

CBS took the night with a 5.0/14. Then came ABC, 3.7/10; NBC, 3.3/9; Fox, 2.6/7; Univision, 1.8/5; CW, 0.7/2; and MyNetworkTV, a 0.6/1.7 CBS' "Survivor: Fiji" earned a steady 4.5/13, as did "CSI" with a 6.7/17. Still, "CSI" victory wasn't that domineering over an ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" clip show, which pulled in a 5.0/13.

NBC sitcoms offer little competition, save for "The Office," which took in a decent 4.1/11 at 8:30 p.m. At 8 p.m., "My Name is Earl" fell a bit, down to a 3.0/9. Further down the list was "30 Rock" in its new 9 o'clock time slot with a 2.6/7, and "Scrubs" in its new 9:30 slot offering a 2.7/7.

Fox is continuing to do well with "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader," earning a 3.5/10 in 18-49--all of which could be hurting "Earl." But at 9 p.m., Fox fell back with a repeat of "Trading Spouses," grabbing a tiny 1.6/4.

MyNetworkTV, in an attempt to offer the CW real competition, did so with one of its closest performances yet. The movie "Robocop 2" took in a 0.6/2, which came close to CW's 0.7/2 for the evening. One caveat: CW was in a rerun with "Smallville" and an original low-rated special event, "The Brick Awards."