Samantha Who?

Despite its share of detractors and non-believers, Christina Applegate's return vehicle to regular television, Samantha Who?, has become one of the fall season's surprise hits.  Enough so, that its carrier network, ABC, has picked it up for an entire maiden season.

Samantha Who? received the order for additional installments last week, after the show registered a third week of strong, solid ratings.

Last Monday, Samantha Who? drew in a total of 14.2 million viewers, half a million more than its share of audiences the week before.  That third episode viewership effectively cemented the fledgling show's position as the highest-rated new comedy of the season.  It is also ABC's first breakout comedy hit in several years and this fall's strongest newcomer.

Because of its consistently solid showing, the powers that be over at ABC have deemed Samantha Who? worthy of a complete first season.  They gave the go ahead for another nine episodes of the upstart sitcom, bringing its current maiden offering to the perfunctory 22 episodes.  The series joins fellow newbies, Private Practice and Pushing Daisies, which had been greenlit for additional installments a couple of weeks earlier.

Samantha Who?'s formidable numbers comes, thanks in part, courtesy of a potent lead-in from Dancing With the Stars.  The celebrity dance-off once again swept last Monday night's competition, with the hour-and-a-half long contest show reeling in 21.4 million for ABC.

In its own 9:30pm time slot, Samantha Who? emerged as the most-watched comedy telecast on any network on any night in the last eight months, since the telecast of CBS' Two and a Half Men on February 26 this year.

Thanks to the top-rate performances of both Dancing With the Stars and Samantha Who?, ABC bested all other networks for a sixth straight Monday last week as the station with the largest number of total viewers.


-Rosario Santiago, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: ABC, The Hollywood Reporter
(Image Courtesy of ABC)