Ratings: New Girl Opens Big, Bigger Than Glee

Adorkable is a winning trait. Zooey Deschanel and that precious description brought 10.08 million viewers to the series debut of New Girl — which did substantially better than the Season 3 premiere of Glee (8.91 million).

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Overnight Nielsen ratings further showed that the new Fox sitcom scored a 4.7 rating among industry-prized 18-to-49-year-olds, also beating Glee (3.8 -- down a daunting 32 percent vs. last year's start).

The other big debut of the night — Unforgettable, starring Poppy Montgomery — had 13.98 million people remembering to tune in, posting a 2.9 demo rating and beating the competition in prime time's final hour: the season premiere of Body of Proof (9.65 million/2.3) and Week 2 of Parenthood (5.26 million/2.1). The new show also did better than its time slot predecessor, The Good Wife, by 9 percent in total viewership (16 percent in demo rating).

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It benefited of course by following the ratings juggernaut tandem of NCIS, which attracted 19.55 million people to its Season 9 opening episode, and spin-off NCIS: Los Angeles, which lured 16.69 million to its third season debut. The former improved by 3 percent over its previous start in viewership; the latter by 14 percent. Based on this auspicious start, it looks like Tuesday night will remain a stronghold for CBS.

The sophomore start of Fox's Raising Hope at 9:30/8:30c reached 6.87 million people -- a solid start.

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Against NCIS and Glee at 8/7c, the first hour of Dancing With the Stars snagged 10.74 million viewers vs. the Season 12 premiere of The Biggest Loser on NBC (6.09 million) and The CW's 90210 (1.56 million)

At 9/8c, DWTS' first results show enjoyed an uptick to 14.54 million as did Loser (6.17 million) vs. the second outing of Ringer — for which 1.96 million marked a nearly 30 percent decrease from its premiere numbers (2.7 million).