So much for the widely accepted idea that a "maturing" television show's ratings can't go anywhere but down as it hits double-digit seasons... as well as any lingering thoughts that NBC's Joey will ever prove itself a worthy inheritor of Friends' Thursday night time period.

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The tenth season premiere of CBS's Survivor series delivered huge ratings in its Thursday night debut, swamping its NBC competition and becoming most watched non-Super Bowl Survivor premiere since the franchise's Survivor: Africa third edition debuted nearly three and a half years ago.

In a performance that underscored the ongoing disintegration of NBC's one-time "Must See TV" lineup, Survivor: Palau premiered to 23.66 million viewers on Thursday, February 17 -- a figure that represented a remarkable 4 million viewers increase over the 19.64 million viewers that last season's Survivor: Vanuatu averaged during its Fall 2004 run and 3.6 million more viewers than Vanuatu's premiere.

Dominating its 8-9PM ET/PT time period in all key demographics, Survivor: Palau's debut also delivered a 13.3/21 rating/share in households, a 6.7/19 in Adults 18-34, a 9.1/23 in Adults 18-49, and a 10.5/24 in Adults 25-54 -- Survivor's best households and Adults 18-49 figures since Survivor: The Amazon's February 13, 2003 broadcast and its best Adults 18-54 numbers since Survivor: Africa premiered on October 11, 2001.

Survivor's performance allowed it to lap original episodes of NBC's Joey and Will & Grace in just about all key metrics. Neither NBC sitcom managed to break the 10 million viewers mark -- a milestone that represented Will & Grace's worst original episode performance of the season and Joey's second-worst -- and while the sitcoms still managed to place second in their time periods among both overall viewers and Adults 18-49, they weren't as fortunate among Adults 18-34, where The O.C.'s 4.6/14 ranked the Fox series solidly ahead of NBC's 3.7/11 average.

Compared to Friends' year-ago performance, Joey was down about 60% in both viewers and Adults 18-49 -- a fact that can not be overlooked when discussing the (comparatively minor) 25-30% decline in the 2004--2005 season's performance of NBC's The Apprentice 9PM lead-out.

Together with original episodes of CSI (30.72 million, 10.9/26) and Without A Trace (21.01 million, 6.9/17), Survivor: Palau's surprisingly strong premiere powered CBS to its most watched Thursday night since Nielsen implemented people meters in 1987 as well as its best Adults 18-49 performance since March 2001.

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