Nice start for ABC's 'Suburgatory'

ABC comedy ''Suburgatory'' opened to good numbers Wednesday night, building on its lead-in from ''The Middle'' and taking advantage of NBC's comedy weakness in the time period with ''Free Agents.'' Fox and its two-hour ''The X Factor'' won the night among young adults, while CBS vet ''CSI'' ruled Wednesday's closing hour.All of the nets, meanwhile, likely lost some male viewers , especially in markets like NY, Boston and Atlanta , to coverage of the tense final night of baseball's regular season on ESPN and MLB Network.Fox won the night among young adults, according to preliminary national estimates from Nielsen, with ''The X Factor'' averaging a 3.9 rating/11 share in adults 18-49 and drawing 11.5 million viewers overall. Though down some from its week-ago premiere, ''X'' won three of its four half-hours in the demo and had its best showing at 9:30 when ABC's ''Modern Family'' wrapped. It was also up more than 30% vs. the two hours of ''Hell's Kitchen'' for Fox on the same night a year ago.For ABC, "The Middle" kicked off the night with a 2.6/8 in 18-49 and 8.6 million viewers overall, and new comedy "Suburgatory" followed with a 3.3/9 in the demo and 9.8 million total viewers -- the best showing with a regular comedy in the timeslot for ABC in nearly six years; last season, "Better With You" consistently dipped from its "Middle" lead-in, so any growth at 8:30 is a positive for ABC. The net then surged as usual at 9 p.m. with "Modern Family" (5.6/14 in 18-49, 13.2 million viewers overall) -- down from its series highs of the previous week but up more than 20% year to year. And at 9:30, the second-season premiere of "Happy Endings" (series-high 3.2/8 in 18-49, 7.4 million viewers overall) dropped off considerably from its lead-in, but still was up vs. "Cougar Town" a year ago, and the net will hope to see its retention of "Modern Family" improve as the season progresses.At 10 o'clock, ABC's new soap ''Revenge'' had a solid second week (2.7/7 in 18-49, 8.6 million viewers overall), down 18% from its premiere when it had a significantly stronger lead-in courtesy of ''Modern Family'' but still more than double the rating of year-ago timeslot weakling ''The Whole Truth.'' ''Revenge'' placed second to CBS vet ''CSI'' (3.0/8 in 18-49, 11.6 million viewers overall), which dipped only slightly and again had no problem topping its crime drama competition on NBC, ''Law and Order: Special Victims Unit'' (2.0/5 in 18-49, 7.1 million viewers overall).Also for CBS, ''Survivor'' (3.1/9 in 18-49, 10.5 million viewers overall) ran second in 18-49 for the 8 o'clock hour, down a tick from last week and off about 10% year to year. The sturdy ''Criminal Minds'' followed at 9 (3.6/9 in 18-49, 12.6 million viewers overall), down from its strong season opener but on par with last year. Earlier in the evening at NBC, ''Up All Night'' (2.1/6 in 18-49, 5.3 million viewers overall), though down from its timeslot premiere of last week, again was a nice improvement over last year's ''Undercovers.'' The same can't be said for the net's other new Wednesday half-hour, ''Free Agents'' (1.0/3 in 18-49, 3.1 million viewers overall), or its 9 p.m. drama ''Harry's Law'' (1.2/3 in 18-49, 7.4 million viewers overall), with the latter not providing much of a lead-in for ''SVU.''At CW, ''Hater'' (0.6/2 in 18-49, 1.4 million viewers overall) and ''America's Next Top Model'' (0.8/2 in 18-49, 1.7 million viewers overall) both rebounded a bit from their poor showings of last week. ''Hater,'' this week featuring Kim Kardashian, drew its largest overall audience in its three airings to date.Preliminary 18-49 averages for the night: Fox, 3.9/11; ABC and CBS, 3.3/9; Univision, 1.8/5; NBC, 1.6/4; CW, 0.7/2.In total viewers: CBS, 11.6 million; Fox, 11.5 million; ABC, 9.3 million; NBC, 6.3 million; Univision, 4.1 million; CW, 1.6 million. Contact Rick Kissell at rick.kissell@variety.com

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