'American Teenager' stays hot

ABC Family series dominates this summer

By RICK KISSELL

'Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood'

Another week, another record for ABC Family's "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," which has emerged as the summer's hottest new series.

The drama, whose central storyline revolves around a high school student's unplanned pregnancy, averaged 4.09 million viewers with Tuesday's episode, up sharply from last week's previous best of 3.58 million, according to Nielsen. Prior to "Secret Life," the largest aud for an ABC Family series had been 2.9 million for a seg of "Kyle XY" in 2006.

"Secret Life" is really connecting, of course, with female teens, racking up a huge 10.9 rating/36 share in the 12-17 age group -- up from the previous week's 8.8/30 and a 7.8/28 for two weeks ago.

It was cable's No. 1 program of the night in total viewers, adults 18-49 (1.4/5), adults 18-34 (1.7/6) and persons 12-34 (2.9/10). In the latter category, it has a shot to stand as the week's No. 1 series -- broadcast or cable.

Elsewhere, NBC's "America's Got Talent" was Tuesday's top show with a two-hour seg (3.5/10 in 18-49, 12.61m). Contest will be preempted by the Olympics for the next two weeks but will return Aug. 26.

At CBS, "Big Brother" hit a summer high (2.5/7 in 18-49, 6.45m), placing second to "Talent" and easily topping the finale of ABC's "I Survived a Japanese Game Show" (1.8/5, 4.54m).

And Oxygen set network records with the latest episode of "Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood," which averaged 1.4 million viewers. Among women 18-49, its throng of 764,000 made it the top cable program in the demo at 10 p.m.