"The national rollout of Twentieth Television's Geraldo At Large was the top-performing syndicated rookie according to the national household ratings for the week ending September 17," B&C reports.

"Geraldo averaged a 1.6 rating in just 75% of the country, mainly in late fringe time periods. Even more impressive for the solid debut was that Geraldo may not have gotten the marketing push and attention internally it would have had Twentieth executives not also been busy launching start-up MyNetworkTV."

> Update: 11:20am: Read related stories in Variety and TV Week...