‘The Voice’ Propels NBC to a Big Ratings Win on Monday Night

“The Voice” on Monday cemented its status as television’s premier reality competition show, as NBC got off to a strong start in the new television season, according to preliminary ratings figures.

The other rosy news for NBC was the initial showing of the network’s much-talked-about new crime drama, “The Blacklist.” The show, which stars James Spader, posted hit-level numbers for its premiere, averaging more than 12 million viewers and a booming 3.8 rating in the category NBC sells to advertisers, viewers from the ages of 18 to 49.

Even accounting for a slight decline later when official national numbers arrive â€" because “Blacklist” benefited in its first half-hour Monday from a brief runover from “The Voice” â€" the performance was among the best in recent seasons for a new drama.

NBC promoted its overall supremacy Monday in the 18-49 competition. It topped its nearest competitor, CBS, by 70 percent with those viewers, which NBC research reported was the biggest margin for any network on a premiere-week Monday since Nielsen Research introduced its People-Meter system in the 1980s.

The next best ratings story from night 1 of the new season was how well Fox’s new drama “Sleepy Hollow” performed in its second week, when it had to face full competition on three other networks. The gothic series involving a reincarnated Ichabod Crane beat everything but “The Voice” in the 9 p.m. hour in that 18-49 competition, including the holdover hits “Two Broke Girls” on CBS and “Dancing With the Stars” on ABC.

“The Voice” remains NBC’s most potent weapon (after “Sunday Night Football”) and performed better in its premiere this season that it did a year ago, perhaps reflecting interest in the return to the original judging foursome, with Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green back to join Adam Levine and Blake Shelton.

The show grew to a 4.9 rating in the 18-49 category, up from a 4.2 last year, and to 14.7 million total viewers, up from 12.3 million a year ago.

The impressive performance by “The Blacklist” may be tempered slightly by a ratings decline in its second half-hour, though some of that could also be the product of extra viewers left from the minute or so runover from “The Voice.”

Still, the new NBC drama crushed the latest CBS crime drama, “Hostages,” which had its debut in the same hour. That show, an experiment by CBS in a more serialized drama, may be the season’s first endangered species. It started out with only 7.8 million viewers in its first half-hour (low for CBS) and a 2.0 rating among the 18-49 viewers, then fell to 7.2 million viewers and just a 1.7 rating with those younger adults.

The threat behind that falloff is that the audience will not jump into the serialized story, lose its thread and then abandon the series. The show’s future may hinge on how many viewers chose to record the drama for later viewing.

CBS got good news at the top of the night, with an hourlong premiere for the final season of the comedy “How I Met Your Mother.” It pulled in more than nine million viewers and scored a solid 3.6 rating in the 18-49 group. That was good for second place to “The Voice” in that hour.

But the other CBS comedies fell. “Two Broke Girls” was down to a 2.8 rating from a 3.7 last year in the 18-49 category. That affected the premiere of the new CBS entry “Mom,” which landed with a mediocre 2.5 rating and 7.9 million viewers.

The bad news for ABC was the plunge in ratings for “Dancing,” which started well last week against weaker competition. It reverted on Monday to recent form, drawing big numbers of total viewers â€" 13.3 million â€" but losing significant numbers of younger viewers. It dropped 24 percent from last week among the 18-49 viewers, to a 2.3 rating. It finished last in the 9-10 hour in that category.