The combination gave NBC an easy win for the night in the demo, along with a narrow win in total viewers.

No broadcast series took a bigger hit than ABC’s creaky procedural “Castle”, which plummeted 45% at 10 p.m.to a 1.2 rating.

This is also where it should be noted that live-plus-same-day ratings continue to tell a smaller and smaller part of the story. That makes it the lowest-rated Big Four show of the night. New comedy “Life in Pieces” had a decent 2.7, and “Scorpion” (2.2) was even with the season 2 finale.

Blindspot, a drama centered on a mysterious amnesia victim whose body tattoos provide clues to a huge crime conspiracy, opened with 10.6 million viewers, easily winning its time slot in viewers and more than doubling competitors Castle (ABC) and NCIS: Los Angeles (CBS) in advertiser-prized young adults. That was down from the fall 2013 series debut of NBC’s The Blacklist (3.8) as well as the James Spader’s drama Season 2 opener (3.5) in the time slot. “Blindspot” followed. NBC won the 18-to-49 age group, and CBS was second. Sunday Night Football is also averaging a 15.5/27 national household rating and a 10.0 rating in the Adult 18-49 demographic, up 9% and 8% respectively from this point last season. Leading out from “Gotham”, the new series “Minority Report” settled for a 1.1.

Among the three big series debuts, initial bragging rights go to Blindspot. At 8 p.m., ABC lights the lights at 8 p.m. with the premiere of its grownup-friendly “Muppets” – Statler and Waldorf will be there to keep things in check if they get too rowdy – while Fox counters with Ryan Murphy’s campy slasher homage, “Scream Queens”.

The Big Bang Theory was obviously the top show of the night, averaging a 4.5 rating in the key demo.

Growing over its year-ago Total Viewer 3rd quarter audience for the 3rd year in a row (+3% – 7.636 million vs. 7.386 million for 3Q14),”World News Tonight” attracted its largest overall 3rd quarter audience in 8 years – since 3Q07.

Of the other premieres, Life in Pieces did okay for a new family comedy at CBS, keeping 60% of the Big Bang Theory lead-in. Primetime on CBS and NFL Network beat the combined delivery of NBC, ABC and FOX by +84%. The Dunham special produced NBC’s highest 18-49 and total-viewer results in the time period, excluding sports, since June 25 (1.3 in 18-49, 6.9 million viewers overall for “Dateline Mystery”). The 9-10PM portion, which directly led into “Blindspot”, posted a 3.8 with 13.02 million.