TV ratings: ‘SYTYCD’ jumps on rerun-heavy Wednesday

Dancing alone works for Fox.

With virtually no original competition on the four major television networks, “So You Think You Can Dance” surged to its highest young-adults rating of the season so far Wednesday night, according to early numbers from Nielsen.

The Fox dance-off earned a rating of 1.7 among key 18- to 49-year-olds in its fourth episode of Season 11, rising 31% from last week and out-rating its premiere.

In total viewership, the show increased 20% to 5.27 million people tuning in. The premiere drew 5.3 million overall.

“SYTYCD” earned the highest 18-49 rating of the night, but a “CSI” rerun had the most viewers overall (nearly 6 million).

Elsewhere on broadcast TV, the lack of originals appeared to help ABC’s “Motive” rise to a 1.0 in 18-49, up 25% from last week’s weak result.

On cable, ESPN is having a strong run so far with the World Cup soccer tournament in Brazil.

Through 20 matches so far, the ESPN cable networks are averaging a 2.8 household rating in Nielsen’s 56 metered markets, helped by a big number from the United States’ victory over Ghana. That’s up 27% from the first 20 contests in the 2010 event in South Africa.

Wednesday’s matches rated as follows in ESPN’s metered-market averages: Spain-Chile (2.6), Cameroon-Croatia (2.4) and Australia-Netherlands (1.9).

Total viewership and demo numbers for those matches will be available later on Thursday.

Follow Ryan Faughnder on Twitter: @rfaughnder