''Grey's Anatomy'' bumps ''Boston Legal''

For the rest of this season, Boston Legal is fading to Grey, as sexy medics replace sexy lawyers. ABC’s brief trial run of Grey’s Anatomy in Legal‘s usual Sunday night timeslot has been so successful that the network has decided to leave the three-weeks-old medical drama there for the rest of the season, the Associated Press reports.

In that 10 p.m. timeslot, both shows have done well among the 18-to-49-year-old group advertisers favor, but Grey has done a better job of hanging on to the lead-in audience coming from ABC’s 9 p.m. juggernaut Desperate Housewives. Grey has averaged 17 million viewers per episode, compared to 12.5 million for Boston.

Boston creator David E. Kelley hasn’t commented on the move, but he can’t be too happy about it. He complained loudly a couple years ago when ABC moved the show’s predecessor, The Practice, out of the same timeslot to another night, where it fared poorly. ABC hopes to make it up to Kelley by airing 27 episodes of Boston Legal next season — that’s the usual annual order of 22 shows plus the five unaired episodes from this year that Grey will pre-empt. No word on which show will win the battle over the timeslot next fall, or where the loser will end up on the schedule.