NEW YORK -- FX's premiere episode of "The Shield" collared more viewers in key demos than any other program on basic cable last week.
In both the adults 18-49 and 25-54 categories, "Shield" on Tuesday edged out a firstrun episode of TLC's "Trading Spaces" on Saturday, according to national Nielsen results for the Jan. 6-12 frame.
"Shield" detained 3.23 million in the 25-54 demo compared to 3.14 million for "Spaces." Among adults 18-49, the tally was "Shield" 3.13 million and "Spaces" 3.12 million.
But among cable networks, TBS claimed first place overall in 18-49, with a primetime average of 1.20 million for the week. TBS' sister network TNT finished second. But TNT beat TBS in primetime among 25-54, averaging 1.32 million. Third place in both demos went to USA.
MTV's "The Osbournes" is still wowing the 18-49 crowd, chalking up 2.79 million on Tuesday (head to head with "Shield") to wind up third. But among adults 25-54, "Osbournes" wound up 14th, pulling 1.74 million.
Similarly, MTV's "Real World XII," the lead-in to "Osbournes" on Jan. 7, reaped 2.69 adults under 50 for fourth place during the week, but could manage only 1.52 million in the 25-54 demo, dropping it to 24th place.
TBS' "America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story," on Sunday, emerged the highest-rated original movie among adults 18-49 and 25-54 for the season. "Prince" was third over all for the week with 2.71 million 25- 54s, and fifth for the week among 18-49s (2.49 million).
The highest-rated theatrical movie was TNT's Friday cablecast of "The Perfect Storm," which washed ashore 2.44 million 25-54s (good for fourth place overall) and 2.14 million 18-49s (slotting it in 11th place).
Among other high-scoring individual shows last week, TLC's "While You Were Out" on Saturday was fifth in 25-54 and eighth in 18-49 and FX's cablecast of the "Armageddon" theatrical was sixth among 25-54 and 12th among 18-49.
Three of World Wrestling Entertainment's "WWE Raw" hours on TNN scored in the top 10 in both 18-49 and 25-54. And two separate runs of "Pretty Woman" on TBS finished in the top 10 among 25-54 and 13th and 14th with 18-49.
An original episode of USA's hit weekly series "The Dead Zone" landed in 10 place among 18-49 and 12th place among 25-54.
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