Last night's season two premiere of Mad Men did massively better than both last year's first season premiere and last year's season average.
Mad Men had 1.95 million viewers for the premiere and considering that the season one average was around 900,000, that puts it up over 100% versus last year's average.
We also hear that it's demo performance was pretty solid with roughly 50% of total viewing being in the 18-49 (955K viewers) and 25-54 (996K) year old demos based on the Nielsen Fast Nationals.
That's really great news for AMC. By extension BMW, who sponsors the show should be pleased as well. I love that the show only had one commercial.
I also really love the irony of a show set on Madison Avenue having hardly any advertising at all. Only one commercial for one minute. As I wrote earlier, I liked that ad -- a commercial giving you some history about the BMW tagline "The Ultimate Driving Machine".
I watched Season 1 over the weekend on On Demand. It’s an awesome show – the competition pales in comparison. All good things to Mad Men!
Army Wives and In Plain Sight are way better. How did that show do against those two?
What were Breaking Bad’s ratings like in comparison to Mad Men last year?
Sandy, not as good as last night and the person I spoke with made a point of bringing Breaking Bad up for context. Unfortunately I was taking notes by hand and I can’t read my own chicken scratch with regard to Breaking Bad’s numbers. I think Breaking Bad had a 1.1 HH Rating in its premiere, Mad Men Season one had a 1.3 rating and last night’s episode had a 1.6 rating.
You’re right it did. They don’t have as much money as USA and TNT do to promote their shows.
Steven, I was sure I replied to your first comment in this thread but now I don’t see my reply. Probably a sign that I need to back away from the computer for a while! I agree with youIt’s been reported that they had a $25 million budget to promote Mad Men this season. That seems really high, but I know for sure they’re doing at least some promotin because I saw several ads for the premiere while watching ESPN last week.
Steven, since when are ratings the sole indicator of quality? If that were the case, American Idol would be the best show on television. (Did I really just type that sentence? I just threw up in my mouth a little…) Fortunately this isn’t true. Mad Men may not get the 4.5 million+ viewers of In Plain Sight or the 3.5 million of Army Wives (or whatever Hannah Montana and Spongebob get), but who cares? The numbers are up big, and the show itself is still of excellent quality. If both of those elements hold steady, AMC will renew it again.
It certainly doesn’t violate its own rules from week to week like IPS did (The doctor can’t run his own practice one week, but the religious couple can still have a soup kitchen the next?) The only thing “In Plain Sight” was the shark that show was jumping.
And don’t even get me started on comparing MM to the rash of procedurals over on the nets. They may get 5-10x more viewers, but the likes of CSI Miami and NCIS being better than Mad Men? Yeah right.
That is why I think Hulu is going to bring Mad Men 2007 series to hulu!! Check out:
http://www.tech-linkblog.com/2008/07/hulu-clues…
for further information!!
Sandy, FYI, my chicken scratch seems to check out ; ) This story in TV week adds a little more info in that Breaking Bad did 796K in the 25-54 to last night 996K for Mad Men. http://www.tvweek.com/news/2008/07/nearly_2_mil…
It Should do well since they've been promoting it more than a Ford dipped in Coke sprinkled with McDonald's Big Macs! I've been seeing ads for it non-stop. And I don't have a tv so that's truly impressive. I like the show, but I generally think it's WAY overhyped. Did In Plain Sight suffer too much?
It Should do well since they've been promoting it more than a Ford dipped in Coke sprinkled with McDonald's Big Macs! I've been seeing ads for it non-stop. And I don't have a tv so that's truly impressive. I like the show, but I generally think it's WAY overhyped. Did In Plain Sight suffer too much?