Summer's here, just look at the numbers

Wow, summer's here in primetime for sure, just look at the Nielsen numbers, as Variety's ratings guru Rick Kissell dutifully does every morning so that you don't have to.

Wednesday's premiere of ABC's celeb impersonator hokum "The Next Best Thing" (featuring folks like this Borat wannabe doing their darndest to get work on cruise lines) wasn't half-bad, in a YouTube-silly kind of way. "Best Thing" opened to respectable summer-level ratings at 8 p.m., drawing about 7.7 million people with nothing better to do and about a 7 share of the adults 18-49 audience with nothing better to do. Fox had the lion's share of the traction last night with the two-hour opener of "So You Think You Can Dance," which drew 9.2 million viewers and 4.0 rating/12 share in adults 18-49, per Nielsen prelims.

Not much good to say about CW's post-season burnoff preem of "Hidden Palms." Every 18-34-year-old in the country had something better to do last night, or were turned off by all the carping about it being a pale rendition of "The O.C." in the desert. "Palms" (pictured right) didn't crack the 2 million-viewer threshold, and even in its target aud of teens and adults 18-34, "Palms" got creamed by CBS' "The King of Queens" repeat. Sympathies to "Palms" creator Kevin Williamson, who waited all season for this?!