Fringe, Supernatural and Smallville Friday ratings

The Friday night science fiction block is holding fast on broadcast TV. Fringe held onto its 1.5 rating last week as Smallville and Supernatural posted a 1.0, a modest gain over the previous week's 0.9. CBS won the night as usual with the long-running CSI: NY tentpole.

On Fox, Kitchen Nightmares scored a respectable 3.7 million viewers with 1.6 million falling into the all-important 18-49 demographic. Fringe technically lost a tenth of a point in the overall ratings (down to 4 million from last week's 4.1) but kept its 1.5 core rating. Fringe will take the weeks off and return on Friday, March 11th.

Things are looking even better on The CW. After a couple of weeks of stellar ratings, the network's staple sci-fi shows Smallville and Supernatural both secured a million 18-49 viewers each. That's a ten percent gain over last week's 900,000. Smallville scored 2.5 million overall views, with Supernatural trailing slightly at 2.2. Be sure to check out our wrap-ups and spoiler discussion of Friday's episodes, 'Fortune' and 'The French Mistake'.

CBS won the most overall viewers on Friday night, as usual. Belushi legal dramedy The Defenders racked up 8.7 million overall views, but only 1.2 in the key demo. CSI: NY, now in its seventh season, scored 10.8 and 1.7 million respectively. The show is down significantly in ratings this year: in the 2009-2010 season it averaged 13 million views an episode with over 3 million in the key demo. Surprisingly, freshman New York cop show Blue Bloods has beat it week after week, scoring 11.5 million overall views and tying CSI:NY's 1.5 rating.

Smallville and Supernatural both posted gains on Friday.

As any fan of the series knows, Smallville is wrapping up its ten-season run later this year. The CW promotion machine has been going into overdrive hyping up the final episodes, but the biggest news yet may be that Michael Rosenbaum, Smallville's Lex Luthor, will return before the series ends. Last week's episode was mostly filler (with some unmistakable inspiration from The Hangover), but there was a small nugget that no fan of the DC Comics Universe should miss.

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Smallville airs Fridays @8pm,  on The CW, with Supernatural following @9pm.

Fringe is off this week, but it returns to Fox Friday, March 11th @9pm.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter