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History's "Pawn Stars" tops cable shows

History's

NEW YORK (Mediaweek) – On the heels of notching its best monthly ratings performance in 15 years, History showed no sign of slowing down as the calendar rolled over to March.

The cable channel, riding high on its pawnbroker reality series "Pawn Stars," delivered the most-watched program on ad-supported cable for the week ended March 7, according to Nielsen ratings data issued Tuesday.

"Pawn Stars" delivered 5.34 million viewers at 10:30 p.m. last Monday, breaking its own series record for the network.

The series eked out a win against USA Network's WWE Raw, which served up 5.32 million viewers Monday night.

On the week, History finished with two of the top five deliveries on ad-supported cable. At 10 p.m. Monday, the night's lead-off episode of Pawn Stars drew 4.93 million viewers. Overall, it ranked No. 5 with an average nightly audience of 1.7 million.

"Pawn Stars," which launched last year, chronicles a family-run Vegas pawn shop that deals in a variety of antique and historical artifacts. The cable network wants to launch spin-offs set in New York and Miami.

In February, History averaged a record 1.44 million total prime time viewers, an increase of 17 percent year-over-year. But while History continued to draw a crowd, USA Network maintained its cable lead last week, thanks to "WWE Raw," "Burn Notice" and "NCIS" reruns.

"NCIS" averaged 4.8 million viewers, while "Burn Notice" wrapped its third season last Thursday in front of 4.2 million viewers, a 23% drop from its 2009 season finale.

Fox News Channel claimed second place, averaging 2.2 million viewers. Its biggest draw was the week March 1 episode of "The O'Reilly Factor" with 4 million viewers.

Third place went to TNT and its 1.8 million viewers. Sibling network TBS took fourth (1.8 million; figures are rounded).

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