Call it beginner’s luck, or justified result, or pretty much anything you want: Empire has passed The Big Bang Theory as this season’s No. 1 rated series on broadcast television. Joe Adalian of Vulture tweeted the numbers out, showing that Empire scored a 6.9 and TBBT a 6.7 in the key 18-49 demographic. (That’s most important scripted series—Sunday Night Football is slightly more popular, as Adalian also pointed out. And when you add cable to the mix, The Walking Dead crushes them all.)


Save for some uncomfortable throat clearing about the influx of “ethnic castings” on TV recently—which was eventually followed up by an apology—there’s been a largely positive response to Empire, and now the numbers back up the talk. And while The Big Bang Theory’s most recent episode still took in a huge 16 million viewers, its network and creators are probably a little miffed they have to stow away their “we’re No. 1” foam fingers, perhaps forever. There’s definitely a “bazinga” joke in there somewhere.