Season: NBC Leads Among Adults 18-49 & CBS Tops Total Viewers

CBS’ “NCIS: Los Angeles” drew a 5.2 in the 10PM hour, while ABC’s “Castle” posted a 4.7.

It’s Week 2 of the broadcast season, which means it’s time to assess the declines that normally follow the initial sampling of new series and the return of popular shows from a summer break.

NBC led into “Blindspot” with “The Voice” (3.3, 11.83 million).

The Lee Daniels and Danny Strong co-created drama scored a 8.7/27 among adults 18-49, with a total of 22.5 million viewers, according to the network.

NBC thriller Blindspot is among the early freshmen standouts. Though that figure had climbed to 7.3 million by Friday (including 1 million online streams) and was pronounced by Fox “a model for contemporary viewership”, it’s still a weak showing for the opener of a heavily promoted new series from producer Ryan Murphy, whose American Horror Story did better on cable’s FX network. Gotham was flat at a 1.6, while Minority Report fell 18% to a 0.9.

CBS’ “Life in Pieces” took the most important fall among the many newbies, although it had a a lot softer “The Big Bang Theory” lead-in this time round.

Both marks trail those of the premiere episode (3.11, 10.605 million) but still position “Blindspot” as its timeslot’s #1 broadcast network program. ABC is projecting a -0.1-0.2 downward adjustment for Dancing and a -0.2-0.3 one for Castle.

A few things don’t change: The top three shows among all viewers last week were NBC’s Sunday Night Football and CBS’s The Big Bang Theory and NCIS, just like previous year, with Fox’s Empire close behind.

Speaking of NFL, the Green Bay Packers win over the Kansas City Chiefs 38-28 on Monday Night Football drew a 8.9 rating for the 8:15 PM – midnight ET, only dipping 4% from last week’s New York Jets and the Indianapolis Colts blowout – which was steady with Week 1 of MNF.