Good news for "Supernatural" fans: Of the five returning fall genre shows, only The CW series starring Jared Padelecki and Jensen Ackles has a bigger audience over last year.

In a review of Fast National ratings from Nielsen Media Research by Airlock Alpha, over the first 10 active weeks of the 2008-09 television season, "Supernatural" has earned a 2.2 rating/3 share on average. That's up nearly 16 percent from the 1.9/3 average "Supernatural" earned during the first 10 active weeks of the 2007-08 season.

Four other shows weren't so lucky, however. ABC's "Pushing Daisies," NBC's "Heroes" and "Chuck," and The CW's "Smallville," all have smaller average overnight audiences from the previous year, and nearly all of them are being beat by new genre shows.

"Pushing Daisies" had the biggest drop of the four, losing 36.5 percent of its audience over the first 10 weeks of last season earning just a 4.0/6 after clocking in with a 6.3/10 last year. NBC's lineup both had drops of just under 20 percent with "Heroes" averaging a 5.3/8 compared to last year's 6.6/10, and Chuck managing a 3.9/6 compared to the 4.8/7 a year ago.

"Smallville," which recently had one of its best ratings in almost two years, is off just over 10 percent from its audience average at this point last year.

"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" is the sixth genre returning series, but had no comparable numbers to the first 10 weeks of the 2007-08 season since it didn't premiere until mid-season.

After the first 10 weeks, "Eleventh Hour" on CBS is the clear winner with an average 7.5/13 rating from Nielsen, with second place "Fringe" from Fox pulling in about 17 percent fewer viewers on average.

"Life On Mars" on ABC was just behind "Fringe" with a 6.1/10, but had a stronger Stability Index Rating -- a Airlock Alpha comparison of the show's average overnight rating versus its highest rating as a way to show how stable its audience is for advertisers -- earning a 79.2 compared to "Fringe's" 75.6, the lowest index rating of all the tracked genre shows so far this season.

"Heroes" finished fourth among network genre shows, while "Knight Rider" claimed the fifth spot with a 4.2/6 average.

"Sarah Connor," which has been a ratings disappointment for Fox this season but still earned a full-season pickup, was eighth among the 10 genre shows, finishing just ahead of "Smallville" with a 3.5/5.

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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