entertainment - "season"

TV Ratings: Ratings up 50% from last season -- The presidential campaign has been very, very good to 'Saturday Night Live.'

TV Ratings: Ratings up 50% from last season -- The presidential campaign has been very, very good to 'Saturday Night Live.'

The first week of Dancing with the Stars 7 saw the second-most popular reality show in the country debut strong but then lost millions of viewers from night to night.Monday, the show debuted with 21.34 million viewers and 'won its timeslot from 8 to 10 p.m., though it declined by 9% in 18-49 vs. last year's 90-minute' debut, Variety reports. Still, it helped ABC get its largest number of viewers 'on the opening Monday of the season in nine years (since 1999, when 'Monday Night Football' was going strong).'Tuesday night, the show was the highest-rated of the night in overall viewers and among those 18 to 49, but its ratings dropped. In the first hour, 17.87 million watched, and at 10 p.m., 18.52 watched, TV By the Numbers reports.Wednesday night, for the standard hour-long results show, ratings dropped even further. 15.57 million people watched, down more than 5 million from Monday night. Still, it won the night among total viewers, although just barely over CSI: NY, which beat it

The Gallery Players' production of Yank! A new musical is the recipient of the 2008 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical. Yank! joins The Gallery Players' production of Urinetown!, which received the IT Award in 2007.

TV Renewals & Rejections: Ten new episodes of the series are scheduled -- MTV has greenlit another season of 'From G's to Gents,' the Cris Abrego- and Jamie Foxx-produced reality series themed around polishing up rough-edged young urban men.

Music Reviews: Nikki Blonsky's handlers have done her no favors booking her into what's simultaneously her New York City and nightclub debut. The teenaged Great Neck ice cream clerk, who was magically transported to Hollywood to star in the 2007 bigscreen version of 'Hairspray,' is in desperate need of seasoning.

Jump-starting L.A. Theatre Works' 2008-09 season, David Strathairn and Paul Giamatti star as Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, rivals for the U.S. Senate seat in Illinois. Eric Simonson, 2006 Academy Award winner for his documentary The Golden Age of Norman Corwin, directs a rare and timely revival of Corwin's The Rivalry about the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates.

TV Ratings: 'Criminal Minds,' 'CSI:NY' off to strong start -- CBS rolled to victory on the opening Wednesday of the season behind strong numbers for returning crime dramas 'Criminal Minds' and 'CSI: NY.' It was slower going, meanwhile, for the Eye's debuting comedy 'Gary Unmarried' and NBC's new 'Knight Rider.'

Survivor's first-ever HD season debuts tonight at 8 p.m. ET with the show's first-ever two-hour premiere, although they are two back-to-back episodes, so not really one long, extra-special episode. The show will face tough competition, particularly in its second hour, when it faces off against the season premieres of The Office and Grey's Anatomy, in addition to a special episode of Kitchen Nightmares.With its subtitle 'Earth's Last Eden,' this season of Survivor will highlight temptation and perhaps even good versus evil. Exile Island has been replaced by Exile, and those who go there will be forced to choose between luxury and finding the hidden immunity idol.Speaking of Eden, as I learned this summer while in Africa, Survivor Gabon actually plays a role in Gabon's future. The country needs visibility as it grows its eco-tourism economy, which is necessary because its president recently protected more than 10 percent of the country. Many Gabonese don't understand that, especially

GREY'S ANATOMY. 9 tonight, Channel 6.AS ABC'S "Grey's Anatomy" launches its fifth season tonight with a two-hour episode, Seattle Grace faces a crisis: It's slipped to 12th place in some national ranking of hospitals.