THE SKED: “Major Crimes” Has Moderately Major Debut

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The older fans who cherished TNT’s THE CLOSER came out in force for its series finale on Monday night, boosting its total audience by 50% from last week to a massive (for cable) 9 million viewers.  In pure percentages, its 18-49 number rose even more sharply, by 60%, but the show skewed so old that it only brought the rating to 1.6 (in other words, about 75% of its total audience was over 50 years old), a good but not special figure.

As designed, the huge Closer crowd largely stay tuned to the premiere of spin-off MAJOR CRIMES, which held about 80% of the total Closer audience, or about 7.2 million total viewers.  It, too, skewed quite old, with a 1.2 18-49 rating that meant about 78% of its total audience was over 50.  More dangerous for TNT, that 1.2 was only a bit above The Closer‘s 1.0 rating last week, and that’s with the giant Closer finale lead-in.  We’ll find out how many of those viewers come back next week when Kyra Sedgwick and her character are gone for good.

In other scripted ratings news, Syfy’s WAREHOUSE 13 and ALPHAS both suffered a hit, down respectively to 0.5 and 0.4 (the latter, in particular, is a number that probably sustain the show for long, especially since its total viewers also slipped below 1 million, 600,000 fewer than Warehouse‘s), while ABC Family’s SECRET LIFE OF AN AMERICAN TEEN and BUNHEADS were almost exactly even with last week and with each other at 0.5 each.