Chuck Norris Kicks Butt
And other surprising results from last week's ratings

You can catch old episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger 55 times a week on Hallmark Channel and USA Network. (I'm not kidding. Do a search in the listings.) But apparently that isn't enough. The CBS Sunday Movie scored its highest ratings of the season last weekend when Chuck Norris brought Walker back to the network with Walker, Texas Ranger: Trial by Fire.

But this latest ratings kick doesn't solve a long-term dilemma for the franchise. The CBS Sunday Movie is down 16 percent compared to last season (although the decline is much smaller with 18-to-49-year-olds, only 4 percent), and it is the last weekly original-movie franchise in prime time. As the rest of CBS' current schedule gets more solid each week — it has won in total viewers for the first four weeks of the TV season and was No. 1 last week among 18-to-49-year-olds — network honchos have to be thinking about putting series programming in the Sunday 9-to-11 block at some point in the near future.

The problem isn't just ratings. It simply takes too much expensive promotion and advertising time to properly launch a new TV-movie 20 times a year with today's fragmented audiences. Once a series gets off the ground, a lot of that work is already done.

Of course, putting more series on Sunday means going up against ABC's juggernaut combo of Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy. But this past week, CBS got a taste of what that match-up would be like. Pushed into the 9 pm/ET hour by a football game, Cold Case fared decently against Housewives. If Criminal Minds can perform as well as it has against Lost on Wednesday, there's no reason to think it wouldn't work on Sunday. We can't tell you when, but don't be surprised if the CBS Sunday Movie isn't a weekly entity in the future.

Here's what was hot and what was not in the prime-time ratings for the week ending Oct. 16:

Hot
Freddie: The Biz thought this ABC sitcom would never get on the air based on how Lost repeats were doing in the Wednesday-8 pm/ET hour. Those repeats may be back one day, but in its premiere the Freddie Prize Jr. show built on its lead-in and won the time period among 18-to-49-year-olds.

Criminal Minds: As we said earlier, this new show is giving CBS a solid second place in 18-to-49-year-olds against a dominant Lost. Last week Criminal scored its best ratings so far to give the network its largest audience with series programming in the time period since Dan Rather's interview with Saddam Hussein on 60 Minutes II in February 2003. Take that, Saddam!

Desperate Housewives: Critics can whine all they want about its so-called sophomore slump, but it has been the No. 1 show among 18-to-49-year-olds every week this season and is up 27 percent over last year.

Grey's Anatomy: It scored its best ratings of the season among 18-to-49-year-olds and is retaining 74 percent of its Desperate Housewives lead-in.

Not
Major League Baseball Playoffs: Quick — name three members of the Chicago White Sox roster. Of course not. No wonder Fox's postseason baseball coverage is off 15 percent in 18-to-49-year-olds compared to last year, when it carried the American League Championship Series between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees.