Heroes Slips again, Finishes 3rd to "Dancing." CBS Sitcoms

Dancing With the Stars took Monday night’s top spot once again, even with fan-favorite dance team Misty May-Treanor and Maksim Chermkovskiy officially out of the competition (she hurt her Achilles tendon). The series suffered a mere 2 percent decline from last week's performance show, attracting an average of 18.8 million viewers, according to overnight data, and winning the night for ABC. Dancing’s follow-up, Boston Legal, also performed well, attracting 9.5 million viewers in the 10 p.m. hour (a 50 percent decline from its lead-in, but still above its last-season average of 8.9 million).

Meanwhile, CBS' Monday night comedy block held steady against Dancing: The Big Bang Theory (9.3 million), How I Met Your Mother (9.0 million), and Two and a Half Men (13.9 million) experienced slight increases over last week’s averages. Only the Eye’s freshman comedy, Worst Week fared a little, well, worse: Ratings were down 515,000 from last week, topping out at 8.8 million. CBS won the 10 p.m. hour, however, with CSI: Miami's 13.6 million viewers stealing the spotlight from both Boston Legal and NBC’s Life (5.8 million).

Life wasn’t NBC’s only letdown, though. Chuck continued to struggle, averaging 5.9 million viewers at 8 p.m. (an 11 percent decline from last Monday’s disappointing premiere), and Heroes tallied just 8.2 million at 9 p.m., a loss of about a million viewers from last week, and well below last year’s 11.6 million average.

Lastly, Fox’s 8 p.m. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and 9 p.m. Prison Break kept pace with previous weeks this season, earning 5.6 and 5.4 million viewers, respectively, though both shows are trailing their previous-year averages (9.8 million and 7.5 million) when they aired in opposite time slots (Terminator at 9 p.m. and Break at 8 p.m.).

The CW aired reruns of Privileged and Gossip Girl last night.