The first week of the new TV season was a winner for CBS, which averaged 13.9 million viewers in primetime, compared to No. 2 NBC's 13.4 million. But the Peacock network still walked away with the No. 1 show -- a sitcom called "Friends."

The Emmy-winning comedy pulled in 34 million viewers on the first week of the new fall season, according to the Nielsen Media Research.

Meanwhile, ABC continues to lag far behind its two rivals. Of the top 30 shows in the ratings for the season's opening week, CBS had 13 and NBC had 12, while ABC had five.

NBC, which won last year's opening week and the season as a whole, was down one percent in viewership compared to the same week in 2001. CBS was up 11 percent.

The Big Two also have most of TV's most popular shows: "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," "Everybody Loves Raymond," "Survivor" and the new "CSI: Miami" on CBS; "Friends," "ER," "Frasier" and "The West Wing" on NBC.

The Top 10 programs for the week of Sept. 23-29, according to Nielsen, were as follows:

1."Friends," NBC, 34 million viewers
2."CSI," CBS, 30.5 million
3. "ER," NBC, 26.7 million
4. "Everybody Loves Raymond" special broadcast, CBS, 24 million
5. "Everybody Loves Raymond," CBS, 23.3 million
6. "CSI: Miami," CBS, 23.1 million
7. "Scrubs," NBC, 22.3 million
8. "Survivor: Thailand," CBS, 21.7 million
9. "Will & Grace," NBC, 21.5 million
10. "Frasier," NBC, 21.1 million