* The ’90s are back! While certain TV critics may have been underwhelmed with 90210, the teen-soap remake was The CW’s highest-rated debut ever (fine, that’s going back two years, but still). 4.9 million people watched, a small number by network-TV standards but roughly a gajillion by CW standards—important news since, The Hollywood Reporter says, The CW’s corporate parents may have pulled the plug on the network if the highly-hyped show bombed.
* In other screw-the-critics news, 7.7 million people disagreed with me about TNT’s cliched lawyer drama Raising the Bar, at least enough to watch the first episode Monday and make it TNT’s biggest debut ever.
* Raising the Bar was helped by the fact that, because of Hurricane Gustav, there was no Republican National Convention on the networks Monday. [Update: Well, technically there was, but the news was mostly about Gustav.] But the second (but for TV purposes, first) night of the RNC was down slightly from night 2 in 2004, according to Nielsen. It drew 21.5 million viewers (on ABC, CBS, NBC and cable news), compared with just over 22 million in 2004, and compared with about 26 million of night 2 for the Democrats this year. Of course, the Dems’ Tuesday featured the Hillary Clinton Traveling Media-Drama Roadshow.
The big question: will tonight’s Sarah Palin speech out-draw Joe Biden? Celebrity Barack Obama himself? Or (more awkwardly) John McCain?