‘Chuck’ Versus The Long Hiatus

Not all of the news about NBC this morning is negative. Take “Chuck,” the show that fans downed a lot of Subway five-dollar-footlong subs to save. The third season launch of the “geek chic” spy show last night brought in the second-most viewers in the show’s run.

The two-hour premiere brought in 7.7 million and 7.2 million viewers (broken down by hour), eclipsed only by the post-Super Bowl 3D episode last February.

Remember, this was a show that was hanging off a balcony by its fingernails before Nerd Herders flocked to Subway restaurants to support the show’s main advertiser. Now that the 10 pm Eastern timeslot is open for business again, and “Chuck” is performing better than before (last night’s audience was up 21 percent from last year’s average), fans can hope that their weekly Bartowski fix won’t be so hard to come by.