A few notable items from today’s cable news:
On the heels of a season-best rating last Sunday, HBO has renewed VEEP for a third season of 10 episodes. Veep‘s been a very sturdy success for the network, considerably outrating its splashier sister show Girls this year (although, to be sure, Girls didn’t have a blockbuster lead-in like Game of Thrones to help it out). Julia Louis-Dreyfus will be in perennial Emmy consideration for her lead role, and the show isn’t particularly expensive to produce, so it’s a no-brainer for HBO.
We’ll have to take Sundance Channel’s word for it that RECTIFY has earned its Season 2 renewal, because Nielsen doens’t cover the network and Sundance hasn’t given out any viewership figures. Although Rectify has gotten mixed reviews (including here), those critics who go for the show have tended to give it high praise, and if nothing else, it’s accomplished the goal of putting Sundance Channel into the “serious original drama” conversation.
INSIDE AMY SCHUMER had a very promising start last night on Comedy Central, with what appears to be an 0.9 rating in 18-49s for its initial airing (the network says it was a 1.1, but its math seems to be wrong) and 1.6M total viewers (3M with the night’s 2 other airings included), with a particularly strong showing among Comedy Central’s target audience of younger men. That’s a significant decline from Inside‘s lead-in, the network’s reigning hit Tosh 2.0, with a 1.6 in the demo and 2.4M viewers at 10PM. But it’s still a good set of numbers, and provided an excellent segue to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, both of which retained the entire 0.9 demo and added some older viewers.
About the Author
Mitch Salem
MITCH SALEM has worked on the business side of the entertainment industry for 20 years, as a senior business affairs executive and attorney for such companies as NBC, ABC, USA, Syfy, Bravo, and BermanBraun Productions, and before that, at the NY law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. During all that, he has more or less constantly been going to the movies and watching TV, and writing about both since the 1980s. His film reviews also currently appear on screened.com and the-burg.com. In addition, he is co-writer of an episode of the television series "Felicity."
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