by Renzie Baluyut

You've probably been waiting for it all year- the third volume of Heroes finally made its premiere last night. I caught it myself, and liked it. I'm sure a lot of my friends did too. But in the business of television, buzz is good, but ratings ultimately matter. The question is: was the NBC drama able to hold up well enough against the fierce Monday night competition?

Not quite heroically enough, according to a report on TV.com. In fact, according to figures from The Hollywood Reporter, viewership of Heroes: Villains is rather disappointing- down 25% this season, based on ratings of the third season premiere last night, pulling in only 9.9 million sets of eyeballs.

Which meant one in four who saw the second season premiere last year was probably watching something else, leaving it up to the DVR to record the show, or just busy doing other stuff. Heroes overload, perhaps?

We had three hours' worth of Heroes last night: a 1-hour clip show at 8pm, which pretty much just brings us up to speed with what went down the past couple seasons, then you had Episodes 1 and 2 of the "Villains" volume: "The Second Coming" at 9pm and "The Butterfly Effect" at 10pm.

Understand, however, that in my case, I also want to catch my other favorite Monday night shows- specifically: Gossip Girl (on The CW, at 8pm), How I Met Your Mother (on CBS, at 8:30pm), The Sarah Connor Chronicles (on FOX, at 9pm). So thank Bob for DVR's.

Now that's just MY demographic. What about the rest of Monday night primetime-viewing America? It seemed that ABC's Dancing with the Stars pulled in 21.1 million viewers- more than twice the number of Heroes' viewers- at 9pm, and then CBS kicks NBC's ass at 10pm with David Caruso's screaming hot shades with CSI: Miami's 16.9 million viewers.

The biggest draw for Monday night however, seemed to have come from Monday Night Football, with the return of Bret Favre, so all around, even the other Monday night shows got hit: The Sarah Connor Chronicles only had 5.8 million viewers, Prison Break (also on FOX) also took a slight dive, and so did Gossip Girl, which saw 20% less viewers compared to last week.

Possibly impressive: comedy newcomer Worst Week garnered more than 11 million viewers last night- still at least a million more viewers than the Heroes season 3 premiere.

I'm still hoping that our heroes (and villains) would rally by next week. Sure looks like the Petrellis have some hustling to do.

Cheers, everyone!