NBC's Friends and CBS's Survivor have resumed their titanic Thursday night battles, and, according to preliminary affiliate based National Nielsen ratings for Sept. 25., both shows are clearly off and running.

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Mediaweek's Marc Berman notes that although a 45-minute season premiere episode of Friends kicked off with a time period winning 18.8/28 rating/share, comparatively it was off 16 percent from last fall's opener (22.5/33 on Sept. 26, 2002). Meanwhile, week two of Survivor: Pearl Islands was second with an 11.9/18 -- five percent below the 12.5/18 ratings that Survivor: Thailand scored a year ago on the same night. Comparatively, the second episode of Survivor was also off 14 percent from last week's season premiere (13.8/21 on Sept. 19, 2003) which had the benefit of airing against a Friends repeat.

Airing against the supersized premieres of Friends and Will and Grace, the second episode of Survivor: Pearl Islands drew 19.29 million viewers.

Survivor: Pearl Islands was a strong second to Friends in households, viewers, adults 18-34 (5.3/16), adults 18-49 (7.2/20) and adults 25-54 (8.8/22). Survivor also showed major growth at 8:30 PM, increasing +13% in households (12.4/19 from 11.0/18), +16% in adults 18-34 (5.7/17 from 4.9/16), +18% in adults 18-49 (7.8/21 from 6.6/19), +16% in adults 25-54 (9.5/22 from 8.2/21) while adding +2.85m viewers (20.72m from 17.87m).


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