Monk , WWE RAW , The Closer and Burn Notice lead cable viewing

Monk led all cable viewing for the week followed by WWE Raw, The Closer and Burn Notice. iCarly rounded out the top five. Things were a little more back to normal this week in the sense that there was less political stuff in the top twenty, but SpongeBob's only appearance in the top twenty was at number twenty.

In addition to The Closer, the Lakers/Celtics game on Thursday and Gifted Hands: Ben Carson also performed well for TNT.

Battlestar Galactica was up versus the previous week, and Damages was back down below a million. I know there are some of you who think we should post all the multiple airings of Damages but unfortunately outside of the main airing, there are also repeats from other weeks and I don't know which is which...so, I'm only listing the main airing.

I included a lot of additional shows from advertising supported basic cable, but it's likely I didn't get your show in. There are thousands and thousands of airings each week to choose from and we can't include them all. The additional shows are just meant to be a sampling. We don't typically see numbers for premium cable shows on HBO, Showtime etc unless we see them somewhere else.

Also please note: we get weekly data for the Monday-Sunday period every Tuesday morning. If your show aired on Monday night or after of the current week, we won't know the results until next Tuesday unless we see the data via press release or somewhere else.

Update: Broadcasting & Cable reports the last episode of Big Love on HBO averaged 1.9 million and is showing growth the last four weeks. James Hibberd reports that Showtime has renewed United States Of Tara.

Full top twenty cable programs (and others) for the week ending February 8, 2009:

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