Zippy first regular 'MNF' game for ABC Monday
   The Philadelphia Eagles took on the Atlanta Falcons on Monday night’s “Monday Night Football,” minus the Nicollette Sheridan pregame towel stunt, and it did well, averaging a 14.8 metered market household rating.
   That’s a 14 percent increase over the 13.0 metered market rating earned for last year’s season opener between the Green Bay Packers and the Carolina Panthers.
   It’s also higher than the 13.1 metered market rating earned last Thursday for the primetime season-opening game between the Oakland Raiders and New England Patriots.
   It led ABC to a first place finish for the night among 18-49s, according to Nielsen overnights, with a 6.6 average rating and a 17 share. Fox finished second at 3.4/9, CBS third at 3.3/8, NBC fourth at 2.2/6, and UPN and the WB tied for fifth at 1.0/3.
   ABC swept the night, starting with a 4.2 average rating during the 8 p.m. hour for the season premiere of “Wife Swap.” That will likely dip when final ratings are released, as overnights capture timeslot data and not actual program data, and “MNF” bled into “Swap.”
   CBS was second that hour with a 2.6 average for repeats of “The King of Queens” (2.5) and “Everybody Loves Raymond” (2.7) and Fox third with a 2.4 for a repeat of “Prison Break.”
   At 9 p.m. ABC led with a 7.8 average rating for the first hour of “MNF.” Fox was second with a promising 4.5 average for a new episode of “Prison Break,” up 15 percent over last week’s second outing, and CBS third with a 3.7 for an hour of “Two and a Half Men” repeats.
   ABC slipped during the 10 p.m. hour, but not much, leading the way with a 7.7 average for the second hour of the Eagles-Falcons game. CBS finished second during the hour with a 3.5 average for a repeat of “CSI: NY” and NBC was third with a 2.5 for a “Medium” rerun.
   ABC also finished the night first among households with a 10.9 average rating and a 17 share. CBS was second at 6.7/10, Fox third at 4.6/7, NBC fourth at 4.4/7, and UPN and the WB tied for fifth at 1.8/3.

Early returns: 'Martha' has a so-so first day
Expectations were high for Martha Stewart’s talk show debut Monday, and while it couldn’t be called a breakout hit, her program did deliver promising ratings, at least more promising than Jane Pauley’s show last year. Monday’s “Martha” premiere averaged a 2.4 household rating and 8 share in Nielsen metered markets. “Martha” was up 41 percent over last year’s timeslot average of 1.7/6. The show inherited “The Jane Pauley Show’s” timeslot in more than a third of 51 metered markets. “Martha” bettered her lead-ins Monday by about 4 percent. Her biggest showing came in Detroit, where she averaged a 5.4/16 or a 45 percent spike from Pauley's numbers last September. On WNBC in New York, Martha averaged a 2.6/10, well above Pauley’s 1.0/3 of last year though third in its 11 a.m. timeslot. Martha also had the best initial ratings of the three syndicated shows debuting on Monday, including “Judge Alex” and Tyra Banks’ talker.

LA Times pushes Kinsley roughly out the door
Los Angeles Times opinion and editorial editor Michael Kinsley said in July that he would be leaving the L.A. Times in the near future, after his mentor at the Times, editor John Carroll, stepped down. Well, the near future is now. Kinsley emailed his colleagues yesterday to say he had been asked to leave by publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson, under what he called bitter terms. Johnson suggested that perhaps Kinsley could continue to freelance for the paper, though Kinsley had hoped to stay on in some sort of non-management position. "That seemed like an insult," Kinsley told the New York Times. "I guess it was. Even after that, I thought he maybe put it badly and he didn't mean to be sending out these go-away vibes. But it turns out he put it exactly right." The Slate founder has been a controversial figure since joining the Times last year. His idea to let outsiders write the paper’s editorials didn’t go over well, and his experiment with online reader supported editorials called “wikitorials” ended rather quickly after lots of dirty posts. Kinsley will continue to write a column for The Washington Post. Andres Martinez will succeed Kinsley at the Times.

Poll: Most call media's Katrina work 'responsible'
Americans have mixed views of the media's coverage of Hurricane Katrina. According to Gallup's Tuesday Briefing, 77 percent of the public feel the media have acted "responsibly," and only 20 percent believe they have acted "irresponsibly." But 49 percent of Americans think the media are spending too much time trying to determine who is responsible for the problems caused by Katrina, compared with 48 percent and 31 percent who feel that way about Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders, respectively. Gallup also found a racial divide in views about the government’s response to the disaster, a point that has also been played up by media outlets in recent days. While 49 percent of whites thought President Bush had a "good" initial response to the hurricane, only 20 percent of blacks felt that way. Twelve percent of whites and 64 percent of blacks thought the federal government's response was slow because many victims were black.

Ratings roundup: 7M see Discovery 9/11 special
Sunday proved to be a huge TV viewing night on cable over the weekend, with the week’s two most-watched shows airing opposite each other. Discovery Channel’s Sept. 11 special “The Flight That Fought Back” averaged 7 million total viewers Sunday night, making it the week’s most-watched original program. Only the season premiere of ESPN’s “Sunday Night Football,” which began at 8:30 p.m., attracted more viewers last week. “The Flight That Fought Back,” about Flight 93 that crashed outside of Pittsburgh, ran commercial free for two hours starting at 9 p.m. Also, WE’s Sunday night season finale of “American Princess” posted a 0.8 household rating at 10 p.m., making the show the highest-rated original telecast in the network’s history and No. 1 among women 18-49 and women 25-54.

Programming notes: Bush giving primetime talk
The networks are re-jiggering their schedules after President Bush decided to address the nation about Hurricane Katrina tomorrow. His speech will start at 9 p.m. on the Big Four networks and last 30 to 45 minutes. Fox had planned to air the second episode of its new show "Reunion" at 9, but that episode has now been pushed to Sept. 22 opposite the season premieres of CBS’s "CSI" and NBC’s "The Apprentice." Fox debuted the show to good ratings last week in order to get in two episodes before other networks' top shows returned. It wanted to show four episodes before its primetime is interrupted by the baseball playoffs. Now Fox will only get in three shows during that period. CBS will air “CSI” repeats tomorrow, but will replace “CSI: NY’s” Sept. 21 premiere with a re-airing of the “CSI” finale, which was supposed to repeat tomorrow. That will push “CSI: NY’s” premiere to Sept. 28. In other programming notes, UPN has adjusted its Thursday lineup barely a week before the debut of its highly touted "Everybody Hates Chris." That show remains at 8 p.m., but new show "Love, Inc." will now air at 8:30 p.m. That move will push "Eve" to 9 p.m. and "Cuts" to 9:30 p.m., when "Love, Inc." was originally scheduled.