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The fairy tale continues for one of this season’s new arrivals.
ABC: The back order for ONCE UPON A TIME should be arriving any minute. The fantasy soap has clearly found an audience sweet spot, and even with what will probably be the season’s strongest Simpsons as competition (not to mention NBC’s football and a CBS schedule boosted by the late afternoon game), it held beautifully in its second week. In an ideal parallel universe for the network, the show would lift DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES and PAN AM by more than 0.1 each, but ABC will take its happy ending as it comes.
FOX: The SIMPSONS Treehouse of Horror episode outrated last year’s installment (4.0 to 3.7), but that didn’t do anything for the debut of ALLEN GREGORY, which won’t be long for the schedule with numbers like last night’s 2.4. (Probably not coincidentally, FOX chose today to announce a back 9 order for Season 2 of Bob’s Burgers; clearly the network knew it would have some space to fill on Sundays.)
CBS: Football and a promotable 60 MINUTES helped the early part of the evening, but GOOD WIFE and CSI MIAMI aren’t budging from the 2 neighborhood this season, and it remains to be seen whether the network will find that acceptable in the long term.
NBC: Not a good game, as it turned out, but the presence of 2 marquee teams did wonders for the network’s football rating compared to the past couple of weeks.
Tonight brings some depressed ratings due to Halloween, and the arrival of the NBC news series ROCK CENTER, not to be confused with the NBC comedy series 30 Rock. No, really–don’t confuse them.
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