Grey's Anatomy Wins Key Demo, Becomes Fall's Highest-Rated Premiere - Entertainment

Despite two characters leaving Grey's Anatomy for their own series, the highly anticipated medical drama succeeded in garnering the adults 18-49 demographic on Thursday, September 27.

Season 4's premiere of ABC's Grey's Anatomy garnered an initial 8.7 rating during its 9pm timeslot, thus becoming the highest-rated program of the night. Despite the good results, there has been a 21 percent drop from last year's results. Ugly Betty also suffered a drop, as it only earned 3.8, which was 24 percent lower than last year's. Another ABC drama, Big Shots, earned 4.7, eventually making it one of the highest-rated new series premieres, however lost a big 46 percent of its lead in and further dropped 26 percent in the second half hour.

Entitled "A Change is Gonna Come," the freshman episode of Grey's Anatomy featured the lead characters Meredith Gray (Ellen Pompeo), Christina Yang (Sandra Oh), Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl) and Alex Karev (Justin Chambers) begin their second year as residents, who will have to mentor their own interns. George O'Malley (T.R. Knight), on the other hand, failed his intern exam, thus is forced to repeat his internship. His unlucky wife, Callie (Sara Ramirez) then becomes the recipient of all his frustration.

Grey's Anatomy did garner excellent results, however, CBS became the over-all winner that night as the network executives were very pleased despite the criticism they received after their veteran series had declining results.

CSI, Grey's Anatomy's major competitor, earned a whopping 8.0 rating, a four percent hike from last year's rating. Survivor: China, which was the show's lead in, emerged victorious in the 8pm timeslot with 4.6, dropping 8 percent from last week's premiere. Finally at 10pm, Without a Trace leveled the previous season's 4.8.

Another Grey's Anatomy competitor, NBC's The Office, held its own in the house as the special one-hour fourth season premiere leveled it series peak of 5.1, and heightened up 19 percent over its 8:30 premiere last year.

0