Here are the Nielsen ratings for the season

Nice work Rodney, I sorted the shows based on their 18-49 rank, and came up with some interesting facts:

-Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives both have more 18-49 viewers than CSI.
-Without A Trace jumps from being the #6 show to #14 if only 18-49 viewers are taken into consideration.
-Dancing with the Stars jumps from #7 to #17.
-Lost jumps from #14 to #8. The Unit jumps from #14 to #26.
-Unanimous: - #23 to #11.
-ER: - #30 to #17.
-Earl: - #40 to #22
-Simpsons: #56 to ##25.
-Biggest Loser: #48 to #28.
-The Office: #67 to #35. Family Guy: #69 to #36. These two have the biggest jumps.
-Dancing with the Stars(Friday) drops from #18 to #39!
-NCIS: #16 to #43
-Cold Case: #20 to #44.
-American Dad: #85 to #47.
-Commander In Chief: #28 to #53! This has to be the biggest drop.
-Scrubs: #96 to #66.

Rest of the shows had mild differences.

It also comes down to production costs. I am sure a show like Arrested Development, with a top notch writing staff and Ron Howard cost a hell of a lot more to produce than a show like Survivor. Shows like ER still last, despite dropping in the ratings, because they kill or send off characters who have been on the show a long time and cost more to have around.

Did I miss something? Was "e5e5e5" (#71) a good show? Is it coming out on DVD? What the hell was it about?

"The Unit" tied with "Lost"? You've got to be kidding me.

Mistakes? Well, they have 60 Minutes on NBC, for one thing. NBC must like suddenly having a non-game-show in the top 30.

Regarding the Surface/Prison Break/Office and AD/Loop paradoxes, you have to look at the percentage change in ratings. The Office was up 48% among all viewers and 60% (!) among 18-49. That's the single largest move, in either direction, by any show on the chart. AD was down 29% across the board. You can blame that on whomever you like, but the numbers speak for themselves.

What's really interesting to me is that even though ER has dropped by 21% and 26%, it's being renewed b/c it's all that NBC has, other than Deal or No Deal, and it's still in the top 20 among 18- to 49-year-olds.

For the person above who wanted to be able to sort: I moved the data into an Excel spreadsheet, and anyone who's interested can get it here: http://home.comcast.net/~ratkins/ratings.xls.

An interesting thing that I found out while I was manipulating the text to get it into Excel was that among 18- to 49-year-olds, only 17 shows had increased in their ratings since last year, whereas 63 had decreased. Multiple interpretations for that, I'm sure.

What i would like to know is what is the cut off point for a series to be canceled. I'm actually fed up of the studios not giving enough time for a story line to develope. A lot of shows (both good and bad - but that is personal taste of course!) with +7mil viewers (MILION!) get cancelled. I have a feeling the studions are just a tad greedy. If a show isn't an INSTANT success, they drop it and look for a new one. Personaly this causes fatigue to the audience. I perfer waiting for a season to see if a show will "catch on" and pick it up on the rerun and the second season. Am i the only one on this? i wonder....

I think the problem is that you can't see when the show was on and what it's competition was. Also there is no mention of lead-ins and therefore audience-flow. It may well be that a show that is low on the chart did very well for that spot it was on (e.g. against American Idol). Also: As I understand some channels skip a show for sport-games which reduces the overall-performance I think. But I'm european, so I don't really know what Nielsen ratings take into consideration...

Also about Veronica Mars remember it was on UPN whos top show I believe was Top Model or some crap. I just started watching it a few months ago and got addicted. So hopefully now that we have the CW they will at least be close to Fox level ratings. Speaking of crap did you see all the ungodly awful 'shows' that are at the top of the ratings? Do the Nielsen families have access to Fox, WB and Upn? Dancing w/stars?!? Deal no Deal?! But then again when oh please God is Idol and Survivor going to DIE!!!

Who can spot the mistakes?

See, but "The Office" was 34th among viewers 18-49--the demo with the money that advertisers are trying to trick them into spending--and "Surface," despite its higher overall ratings was 70th among these highly-prized viewers. Also, it's important to remember that "The Office" did those numbers going up against the number one drama on TV.

I'm just saying, there's more at work here than just the raw numbers, and, with the exception of Veronica Mars (which was brought back because it's critically acclaimed and on a network that isn't expecting terribly much in the way of ratings), a lot of the shows you mentioned being below something like "Surface" in total viewers kick the crap out of it in 18-49 year olds, like "The Simpsons," which is 25th in that demo, "Prison Break," which was 30th, and "Bones" which was 53rd. Well, to be fair, 17 spots isn't so much 'kicking the crap out of,' but it's certainly something.

Though, I'll admit, this doesn't always hold, like with "Invasion," whose gross number of viewers was slightly behind "Surface" but whose 18-49s were much better (39 rather than 70), which was so ignominiously thrown aside.

I'd like to see a chart that's ordered by 18-49s, or, hell, in this day and age, even one that's sortable. We have the technology! We can rebuild it!

Sorry, I got a little carried away there.

Most Interesting:
123. Arrested Development (Fox): 4.2 mil viewers
125. The Loop (Fox): 4.1 mil

And then FOX enthusiastically renews The Loop and made it seem like it was a hit show. On the flip side, when they renewed AD after Season One and Two, they moaned endlessly and pretended they were doing charity work.