The WB network's "One Tree Hill" returns to the airwaves Tuesday night as the No. 1 show among teenage girls on all networks.

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It took some time for the program, now in its second season and coming off a successful fall run, to catch on -- its first episode drew only 2.5 million viewers.

"Of all the shows that they've launched in the last two years, this one has the most traction," Stacey Lynn Koerner, an executive vice president at media planning agency Initiative, told The New York Times. "It does have an audience it's connecting with -- a loyal audience that comes back week in and week out."

The show centers on a teenage boy in Tree Hill, N.C., a loner who is recruited to play for the high school basketball team with a resentful half-brother he never knew. As the series grew, girls' characters were woven more deeply into the plot line, moving much of the action off the basketball court.

"Girls watch the show in large numbers," show creator Mark Schwan said in Wilmington, N.C., where the show is filmed. "Last year, the girls were sort of appendages to the boys."