TV Ratings: Meredith's Death Rules TV Landscape

Over 25 million people tuned into ABC on Thursday night at 9pm to see Meredith Grey die beating the second placed CSI by over 3 million viewers. But is Mer really dead? Something tells me the next episode of "Grey's Anatomy" will break ratings records.

Earlier in the evening, Survivor on CBS led the 8pm hour with 16,35 million viewers. Second was "Ugly Betty", slightly off from last week, but keeping strong with a season average 13,63 million.

"My Name Is Earl" and "The Office" both scored less than 10 million viewers, but the latter did very well in the 18-49 category, matching "Ugly Betty" in the demo and growing 13% out of "Earl".

FOX's back-to-back comedies continue to post underwhelming results with CW's veteran "Smallville" up to 5,07 million viewers this week (well, actually that's last week) and beating "The War at Home" on FOX.

"Grey's Anatomy" was the most watched show in America on Thursday night with 25,59 million people tuning in. The medical drama also beat CBS's CSI in the important 18-49 category with a strong advantage of 10.7/25 (vs. 7.2/17).

Will "The O.C." go out with a bang or a whimper? "American Idol" should help the final episode - unfortunately the second to last installment scored only 3,63 million people, scoring only 440,000 more viewers than "Supernatural" on The CW.

NBC's veteran medical drama "ER" seems past its heyday with only 11,52 million people tuning in. CBS's "Shark" did much better with 15,10 million people. The problem is, many of those viewers are not from the important 18-49 category - the drama did much worse in the demo than ER, despite a strong advantage in total viewers (Shark, 4.3/12 vs. ER, 4.8/13).

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