Updated:Obama inauguration, WWE RAW and Burn Notice lead weekly cable viewing

Inauguration fascination swept the nation, and various coverage dominated this week's cable top twenty as SpongeBob finally met his match in president Obama. But do not underestimate the power of the WWE Raw which still managed to grab the fourth and eleventh spots on the list. The Monday 10pm airing averaged almost 6.2 million.

Burn Notice returned with series best numbers (5.2 million) and was the most-watched scripted program on cable, coming in number twelve. USA's Monk also made the top twenty with almost five million viewers. Our friends at NICK's Back at the Barnyard rounded out the top twenty with 4.45 million.

I've included a bunch of shows not in the top twenty this week. Please note that while those shows are sorted by the number of viewers, they are NOT ranked.

The thing that probably most impressed me was probably how well the Miss America pageant did on TLC (3.536 million) but if I had checked out the numbers from last year when it also ran on TLC and had 3.63 million, I wouldn't have been surprised. The thing that made me scratch my head the most was Damages which only averaged 761,000 in its initial airing, though a rerun of the Wednesday airing on Sunday night at 11pm drew an additional 473,000.

Is it just me, or is the self-indulgence of the producers of Battlestar Galactica showing up in the ratings? The second episode of the final batch of ten was down about 400,000 from the premiere last week to 1.7 million. While I've seen a fair bit of critical raving about the episode, my sentiment was "WTF you only have NINE episodes left, and you're spending it on this?!" In fairness, I've more or less felt that way since the middle of season two, and despite my whining, I will watch until the bitter end.  Update January 30:  Credit where credit is due, the episode that aired Friday January 30 was much better!

Update: I meant to add it to the table below, but forgot, but the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday night averaged 2.5 million between 8p-10p on TBS.

The Screen Actors Guild Awards averaged 2.833 million million on TNT between 8pm-10:06pm on Sunday night. According to our data, a simulcast on TBS averaged 2.54 million.

Update two: I can't believe I forgot the Moonlight debut on SciFi (as BSG's lead-in, no less). But I did. Sorry. It did 1.166 million on Friday night between 9p-10p.

Full top twenty most-watched cable show for the week ending January 25, 2009:

Nielsen Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved