Good luck, Chuck. It looks like you're going to need it.

The first night of TV's new fall season was a war with more than one winner—and more than one loser.

ABC's Dancing with the Stars led the way as Monday's most-watched show, averaging 21.3 million people who forgot how much they missed hearing the name Scary Spice, per Nielsen Media Research. The season premiere was up 1 million viewers over last September's opener.

NBC's Heroes was the night's highest-rated show among 18- to 49-year-olds who don't particularly care if Marie Osmond can fox-trot or not. But audience-wise, the show failed to build on its first-season buzz. Monday's opener was no bigger than its first-season premiere: an estimated 14.1 million viewers.

Publicly, NBC was upbeat about the show's premiere. But its atypical request of Nielsen seemed to speak louder than its press release.

NBC has asked the ratings service to hold off on compiling final numbers for Heroes until the network reairs the premiere on Saturday night, Nielsen confirmed Tuesday.

A "newish" rule, dating back to 2006, allows networks to combine a show's ratings from multiple broadcasts, as long as the same commercials are aired each time, Nielsen Media Research's Gary Holmes said.

As a result, barring a Saturday-night blackout across the nation, Heroes will not go down in the books as having run even with its first-season premiere; it'll go down as averaging more—thanks to people who tuned in on Monday, plus however many million tune in over the weekend.

Holmes said he believes at least one other broadcast network has taken advantage of the double-your-fun rule. As to whether it'll become a numbers-crunching trend, he said, "I think it'll depend on how the industry reacts to this."

According to an NBC spokesperson, the Nielsen loophole likely will be used sparingly because of the commercial sponsorship rule. Monday's Heroes' was a candidate for it because the show aired with limited commercials supplied by one sponsor, Nissan, who also signed on for Saturday.

Per the network spokesperson, NBC decided to combine Heroes' Monday and Saturday numbers before the Monday numbers were released.

Elsewhere, CBS  took the 10-11 p.m. hour with the singularly scheduled CSI: Miami. But in a stat that might make David Caruso drop his shades in surprise, or disgust, the veteran crime series was down more than 2 million viewers from its 2006 premiere—from 17.6 million to 15.1 million.

CBS' 8-10 p.m. comedy block was down, as well, with the exception of Rules of Engagement (12.2 million), which was pretty much even with what The New Old Adventures of Old Christine did in the 9:30-10 p.m. time slot last year.

Everywhere, for CBS, it was a night of diminished returns: Two and a Half Men (13.6 million) was off 1.5 million viewers; How I Met Your Mother (8.1 million) was off 2.4 million; and freshman comedy The Big Bang Theory (9.5 million), while an improvement over its How I Met Your Mother lead-in, was a downgrade from last fall's season opener posted by the since-canceled The Class (10.5 million).

CBS' comedy woes left an opening for NBC's new geek-spy-comedy-action-thing, Chuck. And while good-natured Chuck ran second to Dancing with the Stars in the 8-9 p.m. hour, with 9.2 million viewers, it didn't come close to matching the audience that Deal or No Deal delivered to NBC last year on premiere night (15.8 million viewers for the game show's two-hour opener), or even last week (11.7 million viewers).

Likewise, another new NBC series, the time-traveling drama Journeyman, ran a competitive second in the 10-11 p.m. hour, with 9.2 million viewers, but ran far behind the 13.4 million viewers that the much maligned (and since canceled) Studio 60 averaged in its series premiere last year.

Fox, which launched its Monday fall lineup last week, continued to struggle on that night. In the 8 p.m. hour, the once-hot Prison Break ran fourth in viewers (7.4 million) and fourth in the 18-49 demographic. At 9 p.m., K-Ville followed up a pretty good premiere week with a pretty dismal second week, placing a distant fourth in total viewers (6.1 million), and matching that with a distant fourth in the demo.

The Heroes stunt aside, ABC cautioned that fall ratings might look like they're falling this fall because of the booming digital video recorder market. According to Nielsen, more than twice as many TV homes rely on a TiVo or like device this fall (19.4 percent) compared to last (8.6 percent).

In that case, maybe everybody intends to get around to watching that Monday night rerun of CW's The Game (1.7 million viewers) on Thursday afternoon or something.

Overall, ABC emerged as the most-watched network on the first night of the 2007-08 season, followed by CBS, NBC and Fox.

Monday's results, even Heroes', will be reflected in next week's Nielsen standings. For now, here are the ratings highlights from the final week of the 2006-07 TV year, which ended Sunday:

• Things that might make CBS go "uh-oh": In a week where the network offered up the season premieres of Cold Case (fifth place, 12.7 million viewers) and Shark (seventh place, 11.4 million), its top-rated show was a rerun of CSI (third place, 14.1 million).
• Make that a double "uh-oh": Cold Case's fifth-season premiere was down 3.6 million viewers from its fourth-season premiere; Shark's second-season premiere was its lowest-rated first-run episode ever. (Thanks to CBS' ever-helpful rivals at Fox for pointing out that last stat.)
• How do you say uh-oh in Chinese? CBS saw its Survivor franchise sink to a new (relative) low with the premiere of Survivor: China (second place, 15.4 million), off 2 million viewers from last fall's Cook Islands premiere.
• Either Family Guy fans don't know how to TiVo, or the Force was working overtime for the Star Wars parody that was the season premiere of the Fox animated show (11th place, 10.8 million). The series actually improved on last fall's premiere of 9.9 million viewers, posting its best numbers since the once-canceled series was revived in 2005.
• Unlucky on Monday, Fox had a solid Sunday. Its ageless The Simpsons (15th place, 9.6 million) was also up over its 2006 premiere (8.6 million).
• CBS' ageless, well, maybe we should rephrase...CBS' feisty and remarkably independent for its age 60 Minutes (eighth place, 11.37 million) kicked off its 40th season only down a tick from last fall's opener.
• Fox's new sitcom Back to You (17th place, 9.5 million) and CBS' new reality show Kid Nation (18th place, 9.4 million) both bowed in the top 20 with numbers that were good enough for the last week of summer. The question is: Will those numbers be good enough for the fall?  
• Other premiering new shows: Fox's Kitchen Nightmares (42nd place, 6.6 million) and the CW's Gossip Girl (90th place, 3.5 million).
• One new fall show you can safely pick in your office's TV dead pool: the CW's Online Nation (135th place, 995,000), a sort of America Online's Funniest Home Videos, which came up about 8.5 million viewers short of YouTube's most-watched video clip for the month. 
• Things that might make ABC get really into recycling: The network got surprisingly strong performances out of clip-job recaps of Grey's Anatomy (35th place, 7.1 million) and Desperate Housewives (20th place, 9 million). The Grey's Anatomy show also served to promote its new spinoff, Private Practice.
• Dick Donato won Big Brother 8 (22nd place, 8.7 million); CBS, for a change, won more viewers. The finale was slightly up (300,000) over the Big Brother 7 finale. And it was way up over NBC's Last Comic Standing finale (37th place, 7.1 million).
• CBS' Power of 10 summer finale didn't add up to much on Sunday night—36th place, 7.1 million.
• In cable, where the summer high season was winding down, Disney Channel's Hannah Montana (5.1 million), USA's Burn Notice (4.8 million) and, for the love of Lindsay Lohan, a Disney Channel rebroadcast of Lohan's Freaky Friday remake (4.3 million) were the most watched nonsports (or pro wrestling) shows.

Overall, CBS, viewer defections or no, came out on top as the most-watched network, averaging 8.9 million viewers. Fox, Prison Break problems or no, was the highest-rated network among 18- to 49-year-olds.

NBC, led by Sunday Night Football (first place, 19 million), finished second in viewers, followed by Fox (7.4 million) and ABC (5.7 million).

The CW, behind the premieres of America's Top Model (60th place, 5.2 million) and Friday Night Smackdown (77th place, 4.6 million), raved about its drawing power among the under 35 crowd, and averaged enough total viewers (2.76 million) to pull even with, well, the top-rated cable networks.

Speaking of the top-rated cable networks: The prime-time winners were ESPN (3.3 million), Disney Channel (2.789 million) and USA (2.78 million).

Overseas, where the Vanessa Hudgens photos need no translation, Disney Channel's High School Musical 2 set records in its U.K. and Australian premieres. In daytime, ABC's The View averaged 3.6 million viewers for the first week of its fully stocked panel, with Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd, up from 3.1 million viewers for the same Rosie O'Donnell-moderated week last year.

Here's a look at the 10 most-watched broadcast network prime-time shows for the week ended Sunday, according to Nielsen Media Research:

1. NBC Sunday Night Football (Dallas vs. Chicago), NBC, 19 million viewers
2. Survivor: China, CBS, 15.4 million viewers
3. CSI, CBS, 14.1 million viewers
4. NBC Sunday Night Football Pre-Kick, NBC, 13.9 million viewers
5. Cold Case, CBS, 12.7 million viewers
6. Deal or No Deal, NBC, 11.7 million viewers
7. Shark, CBS, 11.4 million viewers
8. 60 Minutes, CBS, 11.37 million viewers
9. Without a Trace, CBS, 11.3 million viewers
10. Two and a Half Men, CBS, 10.8 million viewers