Ratings: Fringe Truly Benefits from House's Return

House by Adam Taylor/Fox; Fringe by Craig Blankenhorn/Fox
"Technical difficulties" just erased my lovely, pithy, three-paragraph ratings recap for Tuesday, and Peter Brady is almost here for a video Q&A, so we're back to just the highlights:
House returned to 14.4 million total viewers, dominating the 8 pm hour, but was off some 20 percent from its previous season opener.
Fringe, at 13.36 million, enjoyed a 48 percent increase over its week-ago debut.
Despite the promise of the babydaddy reveal,
90210 held steady at 3.33 million.
Privileged dipped 500K to 2.43 million.
The premiere of
Biggest Loser: Families did 7.8 million, on par with the show's recent openers.
Big Brother 10 said goodbye to 7.63 million, a full million more than the Cycle 9 capper. -
Matt Mitovich