Updated: The Closer, WWE RAW, & True Blood Top Week's Cable Shows

TNT’s The Closer was again cable’s top show and by a wide margin with 7.313 million viewers (note, this is for Monday, August 17, not last night's summer finale which will appear next week) but there was no new iCarly this week!...

Once again, even without a new Burn Notice, In Plain Sight or Law & Order Criminal Intent, USA Network still led cable during primetime both in viewers and adults 18-49 for the week, though with NFL preseason action and Red Sox/Yankees baseball, ESPN was a close second for the week among 18-49 year olds.

USA’s WWE Raw once again took the second and sixth spots and Royal Pains and Monk grabbed the third and fifth spots.   An NCIS rerun was 11th (and 15th, 19th, 18th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd and 25th .

The network premiere of Project Runway on Lifetime snagged the 10th spot and Lifetime also placed Army Wives at number 17.

Sponge Bob absorbed the 13th spot and Disney placed three shows on the list with airings of Suite Life on Deck, Hannah Montana and Wizards of Waverly Place.

***I HAVE NOT YET SEEN THE NUMBERS FOR True Blood AS OF THIS WRITING*** but will post them as soon as I do. HOLY MOLY -- another record with 5.3 million.  It was the third most-watched cable show for the week (5.332 million).

I haven't seen the merged list yet, but by my accounting True Blood would've been the #5 show on cable for the week.  And when you consider that HBO is only in about 1/3rd of the homes most basic cable networks have access to, that's impressive.  Will it get to Sopranos style impressive? It's certainly trending in that direction.  The  Sopranos was often the #1 show on all of cable, despite being available in relative few homes.

Terrell Owen’s The T.O. Show (not in the top 25!) scored 1.579 million   viewers last Monday (Aug 17) at 10pm, up over the previous week's 1.415 million.

For those wanting more detail on Mad Men’s Sunday second episode, the 10pm airing drew 1.91 million, a rebroadcast at 11:02p pulled in another 765,000 and still another 193,000 at 1am.

Some other fan favorites NOT in the top 25

TNT:  Hawthorne (3.515M), Raising The Bar (3.465), Leverage (3.428) and the season finale of Saving Grace (3.162).  Dark Blue again lagged with only 2.566

ABC Family: Secret Life (3.304M), Make It or Break It (2.311M), 10 Thing I Hate (1.229M), My Fake Fiance (1.0M), Ruby & The Rockits (988K).

Syfy: Warehouse 13 (3.273M), Ghost Hunters (2.54M), Eureka (1.989M), ECW (1.74M)

Bravo: Real Housewives of Atlanta (2.822M), Top Chef (2.592M), Top Chef Masters (2.42M), Flipping Out (1.02M)

Top 25  cable shows for the week ending August 23, 2009:table updated to include True Blood (#3) as well as including both # of homes and viewers:

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