'Burn Notice' heats up USA

Few say 'Hey' to Abdul bow

By JOHN DEMPSEY

Cabler USA spied solid numbers Thursday night for the bow of espionage melodrama 'Burn Notice.'

USA Network's tongue-in-cheek spy melodrama "Burn Notice" rounded up a solid 3.98 million total viewers in its Thursday premiere.

Paula Abdul, however, couldn't parlay her fame as one of the "American Idol" judges into big ratings for Bravo reality series "Hey Paula." Its first two original half-hours kicked off, also Thursday, with only 607,000 total viewers. That number was well off the pace for the opening episodes of such Bravo shows as "Top Design" (1.76 million), "Top Chef" (1.28 million) and "Being Bobby Brown" (1.1 million).

The roughly 4 million people who checked out "Burn Notice" also failed to match the premieres of such USA series as "The 4400" (6.2 million), "Psych" (4.4 million), "Monk" (4.4 million) and "The Dead Zone" (4.2 million).

But 55% of the "Burn Notice" viewers were adults 25-54, USA's target demo, and 50% were adults 18-49.

The lead-in to "Burn Notice" on USA was the final episode of six-hour limited series "The Starter Wife," which chalked up 3.1 million viewers, 25% below the average for the series.