While that is definitely nice to see, those aren’t what people are usually referring to when they mention “the ratings”, the ones that keep a show on the air–those would be the Neilsen ratings. As far as that goes, there was a definite drop between seasons one and two, but in general two and three were about the same…the average actual numbers dropped a little, but its overall ranking went up.
Interesting you say that, as Adam specially tweeted high Neilsen? ratings a number of times during S3 with the messages like ‘the rating is in ‘& ep** is seasons highest yet- Thanks for watching’, ‘best ratings Once has seen yet- Thanks for watching’ or ‘Series high numbers- Thanks for watching’ etc. & from what I remember when the Dvr? (or whatever the ‘recorded to watch later’ numbers are called), were added into the stats, Once skyrocketed up the ratings- Once also sat in the top 20 most watched shows for weeks on end (wish I hadnt deleted all the info & stats I had on it!)
We also have to take into consideration TV viewership across the board declined drastically, so at 1st while some of the numbers may appear lower than last yr, statistically they are actually higher:)