NEW YORK — Two Emmys for best comedy, an Emmy for best actress and a star turn as Sarah Palin on "Saturday Night Live" may be starting to pay off for "30 Rock" and Tina Fey.
The comedy's season premiere was seen by 8.7 million people, according to Nielsen Media Research. That was only the No. 40 prime-time show last week, but it was a record for the series and 18 percent more than the 2007 season premiere.
"The Office," with 9.5 million viewers, also had its biggest audience of the season, a hopeful sign for long-suffering NBC that people may start to notice its Thursday lineup.
The shows both outdrew NBC's "Heroes," once one of the network's bright spots that has fallen hard in its third season. The show recently dropped two of its key off-screen creative forces in a shakeup.
Fox led the ratings with the rain-shortened conclusion to the World Series. The end of the suspended Game 5, where viewers learned the winner before bedtime in the East, was seen by 19.8 million viewers, Nielsen said.
Although not included in the week's rankings, the most-watched prime-time program was a commercial — Barack Obama's Wednesday infomercial, which was seen by 33.6 million people across seven different networks.
CBS won the week, averaging 11.4 million viewers (7.2 rating, 12 share). ABC had 10.1 million viewers (6.4, 10), Fox 9.5 million (5.8, 9), NBC 7.5 million (4.8, 8), the CW 2.3 million (1.5, 2), My Network TV 1.5 million (0.9, 2) and ION Television 650,000 (0.4, 1).
A ratings point represents 1,145,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 114.5 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.
For the week of Oct. 27-Nov. 2, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: World Series Game 5 Conclusion: Tampa Bay vs. Philadelphia, Fox, 19.84 million; "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 19.1 million; "Dancing With the Stars," ABC, 18.88 million; "Dancing With the Stars Results," ABC, 17.45 million; "NCIS," CBS, 17.26 million; Sunday Night Football: New England at Indianapolis, NBC, 16.74 million; "The Mentalist," CBS, 16.07 million; "Desperate Housewives," ABC, 15.93 million; "Grey's Anatomy," ABC, 15.32 million; "60 Minutes," CBS, 14.32 million.