Modern Family helps ABC to win first Wednesday of 2012

Lynette Rice
Updated
'Revenge' returns with juicy clambake, but it's 'Modern Family' that kills

ABC triumphed on the first Wednesday of the new year, thanks in part to a painful bunch of reruns on the other nets (darn, no fresh shots of Darren Criss on Glee!).

Originals from all of ABC’s series were up versus the last time they aired, with Modern Family scoring the night’s best adults 18-49 showing (5.6 rating/14 share) — a 10 percent improvement from the series low it posted on Dec. 7. At 13.9 million, it was also the most watched show on Wednesday.

The Middle earned a 3.0/9 and 9.9 million, followed by Suburgatory (2.9/8, 8.7 million) and Happy Endings (3.3/8, 7.7 million). Revenge returned with a bang, too — is Tyler really gone from our lives? — and earned a 2.5/7, up 4 percent from Dec. 7 — and averaged 7.9 million viewers.

CBS came in second for the night in the demo, with its return special I Get That A Lot earning a 2.3/6, up a whopping 130 percent from its last telecast in 2010. More than 8 million watched it. Those were reruns of Criminal Minds and CSI.

Fox aired a repeat of Glee and an original installment of Mobbed, which only posted a 1.2/3 and averaged 3 million eyeballs.

NBC and CW aired repeats, too.