Nothing is exempt from betting, including television shows. According to Horizon Media's annual television report, Fox's new show Fringe and CBS' sci-fi drama Eleventh Hour will fare best of the new wave of freshman television shows. Doing worst would be NBC's Kath & Kim and CBS' Worst Week.

The report produced some unsurprising claims, such as that Grey's Anatomy, Heroes and Survivor will continue to kick butt in the ratings. The report did produce some surprises such as ABC overthrowing CBS on Friday nights and the Fox sitcom Do Not Disturb finding success. I guess we'll have to wait until the fall season to see how correct the report is.

What irks me is that after combing through the article I found no mention of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. Did they forget to review that one? Is this a sign of things to come that Horizon Media didn't even find the show important enough to rank?

According to this article in the New York Post, analysts working for companies that buy ads on network shows have reported that, despite the highest-quality batch of pilots in recent memory, no real breakout hits have emerged just yet. Of course, the definition of a "hit" is a bit different than in the "olden" days of the mid-'90s, when shows like ER and Friends used to get 40 percent of the audience, as the article mentions.

The only new shows cited as being even moderate hits were Ugly Betty, which attracted 14.4 million viewers last week, and Heroes, which has been averaging 13.5 million viewers. Realize, though, that's a far cry from the top two shows of last week, Grey's Anatomy and CSI, each of which drew over twenty million viewers.