It only took a week for "Fringe" to fall back to its pre-"House" lead-in days.

The J.J. Abrams series earned a 6.0 rating/9 share, according to Fast National ratings from Nielsen Media Research, beating only "The Biggest Loser" on NBC and "Privileged" on The CW.

"Fringe" was knocked around quite a bit by the series premiere of "The Mentalist" on CBS, which started out with a 9.9/15, according to Zap2it, thanks to a strong lead-in from the season premiere of "NCIS." However, "The Mentalist" lost about 11.6 percent of its lead-in audience. "Fringe" can't snicker too much because nearly 19 percent of the "House" audience abandoned Fox by the time "Fringe" premiered.

The ratings for "Fringe" is off nearly 27 percent from its series high last week, but is slightly higher than its weak series premiere. It pulled Fox down to third in the overall overnight ratings, finishing behind CBS and ABC. However, "Fringe" did help Fox in the coveted adults 18 to 49 age demographic, leading the network to a win there with a 4.5 rating, a bit of a distance ahead of ABC's 3.7.

"Fringe's" viewership is in a state of flux right now, according to Airlock Alpha's Stability Index Rating. The show's index rating is now 81.7, falling more than 5 percentage points from its previous week, which already was below the more comfortable 90 percent threshold.

Fast Nationals usually provide a snapshot of what Americans are watching by pulling numbers from the top urban markets that includes both live viewing and same-day timeshifted viewing. A rating point generally represents more than 1.1 million households while the share indicates the percentage of televisions turned on that was tuned to the specific program. These numbers typically shift when final ratings are issued.

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