ABC's "Ugly Betty," the comedy about a plain Queens girl who pushed her way into the fashion world, was seen by 16.1 million people in its ABC debut on Thursday night.
That figure makes it the most-watched new series of the fall television season so far (around three-quarters of the new pilots have aired already). It was ABC's largest audience in the time period with a scripted show since "Matlock" in 1995.
In its second half hour the show actually overtook ratings juggernaut "Survivor" and increased its audience by 1.6 million. Both shows easily trounced the competition with more than double the audience of sitcoms "The Office" & "My Name is Earl", and three times that of the "Smallville" premiere.
Thursday night continues to look the most heated of the week with "CSI" and "Grey's Anatomy" fighting neck and neck in the same timeslot (around 23 million viewers each). In the 10pm slot James Woods drama "Shark" won the day with little to no-dropoff from last week's debut and just beating long-running stalwart "ER". Newcomer "Six Degrees" though is being summarily trounced.
