AMERICAN IDOL - IN DEBUT, BELLS CLANG

Fox premiered The Wedding Bells following American Idol Wednesday night, but it did not achieve anything like the huge ratings that greeted Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? last week. Nevertheless, the show grabbed an 8.9 rating and a 14 share (versus a 14.1/21 for 5th Grader last Wednesday), good enough to lead its time period as it narrowly edged out a repeat of CBS's Criminal Minds, which recorded an 8.8/13. At 10:00 p.m., ABC's Lost returned to the lead as it scored an 8.3/13 to beat a repeat of CBS's CSI:NY, which posted an 8.1/13, but Lost's ratings remained well below what they had been in previous seasons. Earlier in the evening American Idol once again overwhelmed the competition with a 17.4/27, representing 28.45 million viewers.

08/03/2007