TV Top Ten - Week of October 6, 2008

Despite the fact that Cloris is still holding strong on Dancing With The Stars, the show lost ground to CSI last week as the forensic drama snaked into the number one spot. Dancing's viewership has been slowly slipping over the last few weeks, a trend likely to continue until the show narrows the contestants down to the final few.

While The Mentalist has been increasing in popularity it disappeared from the chart last week. Pre-empted by Tuesday's presidential debate it returned with a vengeance this week, earning a fell season buy-in from CBS. The top in its time slot it's working its way to becoming a regular top five weekly contender.

Among the big four broadcasters NBC has only kept a presence in the weekly top ten thanks to its Sunday night football airings. Unfortunately the Patriots/ Chargers game didn't draw enough of a crowd to break into the chart. It's a bad showing for the network that is hoping to get some new viewership attention with its shaky new adventure drama Crusoe which debuts this week.

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In the cable realm ESPN's Monday Night Football once again reigned supreme. The Vikings/Saints game drew nearly 11 million viewers and handily beat out the CNN coverage of the Presidential debate. For the first time this election CNN's coverage drew a larger crowd than Fox News', but overall Fox News continued to hold more top ten spots than CNN as both faced more competition from an increasingly heated baseball division playoff games.