Ratings for Wednesday, March 21st: “Bent” opens as NBC’s lowest rated series premiere ever

Fox lead the competition as usual on Wednesday with a new, two-hour edition of American Idol (16.55 million viewers, A18-49: 4.9),

CBS claimed second place with a new edition of Survivor: One World (10.20 million viewers) – the franchise’s lowest rated new episode ever – and new episodes of Criminal Minds (11.90 million viewers, A18-49: 3.2), and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (11.22 million viewers, A18-49: 2.3).

Repeats of The Middle (4.91 million viewers, A18-49: 1.2), Suburgatory (4.43 million viewers, A18-49: 1.3), Modern Family (5.64 million viewers, A18-49: 2.0), a new episode of  Happy Endings (4.12 million viewers, A18-49: 1.8), and a repeat of the Missing pilot (5.03 million viewers, A18-49: 1.3) kept ABC in third place last night.

NBC fell to fourth place with new episodes of Whitney (4.22 million viewers, A18-49: 1.6), Are You There, Chelsea? (3.49 million viewers, A18-49: 1.4). The series premiere of Bent from 9-10p.m. (2.82 million viewers, A18-49: 1.0/2.42 million viewers. A18-49: 0.9) was NBC’s lowest rated in-season comedy since the premiere of The Paul Reiser Show in 4/14/2011). Rock Center with Brain Williams brought in 2.99 million viewers, and a rating of 0.7.

New episodes of One Tree Hill (1.45 million viewers, A18-49: 0.7) and America’s Next Top Model (1.28 million viewers, A18-49: 0.6) rounded out the night for The CW.