1. CSI (22.98 million)
2. Grey’s Anatomy (14.54)
3. Survivor (13.310)
4. Life on Mars (11.6)
5. Eleventh Hour (11.59)
6. Saturday Night Live Special (10.59)
7. ER (9.34)
8. The Office (9.00)
9. Ugly Betty (8.48)
10. Kath & Kim (7.46)
11. My Name is Earl (7.09)
12. MLB Playoff (6.8)
13. MLB Playoff pregame (5.26)
14. Smallville (4.08)
15. Supernatural (3.14)

CSI opened its season with a larger audience than the comparable date last year last year’s premiere and pushed CBS to the overall viewership and demo adults 18-49 win for the night. Grey’s Anatomy faded noticeably from its premiere, but helped ABC take second for viewers and 18-49 adults for the night.

Survivor: Gabon beat down the competition from 8-9 winning easily, but did slip 0.1 in the 18-49 demo from last week. Ugly Betty was just about even with last week, while My Name is Earl kept its audience steady, but lost 0.2 ratings points in the 18-49 demo.

Kath & Kim did much better than I expected (and better than Earl) in its premiere, beating everything but Survivor in the demo for its half hour.

CSI premiere topped its 2007-8 premiere and pushed Grey’s Anatomy down at 9pm. Interesting to see if Grey’s can stabilize at that level. The Office held its audience from 9/25, but slipped 0.3 rating points in the 18-49 demo.

Life on Mars and Eleventh Hour premiered to nearly identical numbers at 10pm. The horse race of the new shows was closer than I would have thought, it will be interesting to watch it develop. While it came in behind the premieres, ER bettered its 9/25 audience by 1.4 million and its 18-49 demo by 0.7 rating points, quite an improvement.