Here's a sentence you don't read very often: NBC was the most-watched network last night. Following the huge Super Bowl, NBC kept the momentum going with the second episode of The Voice averaging 17.7 million viewers during its two hours, easily winning the time slot. That was followed by the series premiere of Smash, watched by 11.5 million viewers, easily beating its competition.

Watch the Premiere of Smash>>

The numbers for Smash are especially impressive considering it debuted against new episodes of Castle and Hawaii Five-0. It even managed to beat the series premiere of Harry's Law, which launched in the same time slot one year ago and had 11.1 million viewers.

Smash is actually the highest-rated scripted series premiere for NBC since 2006 with Heroes. The network was certainly banking on Smash being a hit, and it looks like NBC might be on the right track.

The ratings for The Voice are big, but it will be interesting to see how the show does in March when it has to compete against Dancing with the Stars. The huge ratings for NBC (nearly triple most recent weeks) didn't have much of an impact on ABC's The Bachelor, The CW's dramas or CBS' comedies, but the one network that did suffer was FOX.

Going up against The Voice, House and Alcatraz were both down more than 1.5 million viewers each from one week ago. It's bad enough for FOX that The Voice is stealing some of American Idol's thunder, but to hit the network's ratings Monday nights is doubly painful.

Here

8pm
The Voice: 16.1 million
How I Met Your Mother and 2 Broke Girls: 10 million and 11.4 million
The Bachelor: 8.1 million
House: 7.2 million
Gossip Girl: 1.3 million

9pm
The Voice: 19.3 million
Two and a Half Men and Mike and Molly: 12.9 million and 11 million
The Bachelor: 8.4 million
Alcatraz: 6.8 million
Hart of Dixie: 1.5 million

10pm
Smash 11.5 million
Hawaii Five-0: 9.8 million
Castle: 8.7 million


(Image courtesy of NBC)