HBO’s True Blood tops the cable ratings chart again this week, although it’s down three tenths of an Adult 18-49 rating point from last week’s season premiere. TNT’s Dallas reboot looks impressive in terms of all viewers (almost 6.9 million viewers over the age of 2 watched during an average minute), but the show’s 1.5 rating with Adults 18-49 is solid though not particularly noteworthy in the context of everything else on cable. But USA would kill for a drama that earned a 1.5 rating. Burn Notice scored a 1.2 on Thursday, still far below the tawdry spine of USA, WWE wrestling (almost a 2.0 demo rating on Monday).
On the unscripted front, History’s Pawn Stars is the class of cable, with a 2.0 rating on Monday (up from previous weeks). Not far behind in terms of 18-49 audience, MTV’s Teen Mom returned with a 1.8 rating.
Our weekly list has been shortened somewhat — we now rank programs at or above a 1.2 rating. This will make the list easier to read and limit it to programs that have a significant impact on any particular time period. We will note selected programs below the 1.2 threshold, periodically. This week we feature a few other scripted dramas that critics pay some attention to but really don’t have a very big audience. Another USA drama, Royal Pains, falls into this category with a 1.1 rating, along with Lifetime’s Client List (1.0) and especially Longmire on A&E (0.7).
Coming soon…the return of Promo Watch. We’ll look at how often broadcast network is promoting each of their new fall shows on their own air. As we track the promotion priorities over the course of the summer, we’ll have some pretty good clues about which programs the networks really believe in and which ones might be written off before their debut.
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