'Survivor' Floats CBS's Boat To the Top of the Ratings

"Survivor" came on strong to put CBS at the top of the ratings heap last week, but "American Idol" kept Fox in first place among younger viewers.

Here's a look at the week's muscled and weak:

WINNERS

CBS's Thursday. CBS logged its largest Thursday audience since at least 1987 thanks to the debut of "Survivor: Palau," which averaged nearly 24 million viewers, and "CSI," which posted more than 30 million. It was the "Survivor" franchise's biggest kickoff audience since "Survivor: Africa" in October 2001 (if you exclude the post-Super Bowl debut of "Survivor: All Stars"), and "CSI's" second-largest crowd this season, behind only the 100th episode in the November ratings sweeps.

Daytona 500. Fox's Sunday afternoon telecast of the race averaged 18.7 million viewers, crushing TNT's Sunday prime-time telecast of the NBA All-Star Game, which bagged just 8.1 million.

"Stone Cold." The CBS Sunday movie, starring Tom Selleck as a hard-drinking, hard-living Los Angeles homicide detective turned hard-living, hard-drinking small-town police chief, nabbed about 18 million viewers, making it the season's third most watched made-for-TV flick, behind ABC's "Mitch Albom's the Five People You Meet in Heaven" and CBS's "Magic of Ordinary Days."

"Battlestar Galactica." Sci-Fi Channel has renewed "BG" for another season; this season, the show is averaging about 3 million viewers Fridays at 10 and is the cable network's highest-rated original series.

LOSERS

"Michael Jackson's Secret World, With Martin Bashir" remains largely secret, with or without Martin Bashir. Only 8.8 million viewers showed up Thursday night for the ABC News February sweeps special. Two years ago, when ABC News telecast "Living With Michael Jackson," also with Bashir, it copped a whopping 27 million viewers. Wonder if media organizations preparing to spend millions covering the Trial of the Whatever Period It's Been Since O.J. sat up and took notice.

"The L Word." The second season of Showtime's series opened Sunday with 515,000 viewers; last year the series premiered with 936,000 viewers and wrapped its first season with an average of just under 600,000. In fairness the second-season opener was considerably better than the network's prior four-week average in the time slot -- just under 300,000 viewers with various programs.

"Jonny Zero." You can say that again. Fox's new Friday drama trickled in with its smallest audience yet -- 3.2 million viewers -- and got beat in its time slot by WB's "Reba" and "Blue Collar TV."

The week's 10 most watched programs, in order, were: CBS's "CSI"; Fox's Tuesday and Wednesday "American Idol"; ABC's "Desperate Housewives"; CBS's "Survivor: Palau," "Without a Trace" and "CSI: Miami"; ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition"; CBS's Sunday flick "Stone Cold"; and ABC's "Lost."