Ellen DeGeneres Beats All Comers, Scores Best Ratings Since 2006

Ellen kicked off its 10th season yesterday with its highest ratings since the 2006-07 season—and that was the day before she hosted Simon Cowell and his newest X Factor sidekick,Britney Spears.

The Daytime-Emmy-winner many times over scored a 3.0 in total households, compared to 2.4 households for last season's opener. Yeah, that's definitely news to dance about!

Even better was Ellen's dominance in the women 25-54 demo, scoring a 2.2 rating in the ever-important demo, a vast important over last season's 1.3 rating.

Ellen wasn't the only talk show doing work in the ratings: The premiere of Katie Couric's new talk show Katie, which featured Jessica Simpson talking about her post-baby weight loss, was the biggest daytime talk show premiere since Dr. Phil started in September 2002.

Anderson Live's second season premiere, as well as new offerings from Jeff Probst,Steve Harvey and Ricki Lake all scored their fair share of viewers—but they weren'tEllen numbers.