I'm still digesting tonight's season two premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I liked it well enough, and I'm definitely down with a new, evil villain terminator of the mimetic poly-alloy variety. I want to take in another couple of episodes before weighing in further.
In the meanwhile, there have been several requests for Nielsen ratings data on the premiere of HBO's Allan Ball produced vampire series, True Blood. I didn't see the ratings for Sunday night's series premiere of True Blood or the season five premiere of Entourage. While this doesn't necessarily mean that the numbers completely sucked, it certainly suggests they weren't good enough to be boast-worthy. The tea leaves suggest Sue Naegle's reign at HBO is not off to a rollicking start, and we now have a few more leaves to read than we did in April. Note: although True Blood was picked up by HBO before Naegle took the HBO gig, she brought the show to HBO in her capacity as a talent agent, so it seems fair to pin the show's results on her anyway.
The lack of boasting makes it seem unlikely either show will be among the weekly top forty cable show rankings we see from Nielsen. But hopefully we'll run into the numbers in one fashion or another.
Meanwhile Broadcasting and Cable reports that the MTV Video Music Awards performed very well, especially in the 12-34 demographic MTV targets. Sunday night's VMA was the highest rated telecast on cable among 12-34 year olds for the entire year.
The B&C report is somewhat convoluted because it didn't state the average total viewers for the airing, but rather the total reach (typically defined as watching at least 6 minutes worth) across both MTV and the simulcast on MTV2. But based on reach across both networks 23 million viewers tuned in for at least six minutes worth, with more than 12 million of them in the 12-34 demographic.
Update 9/9: Neither True Blood nor Entourage were among the weekly cable top show rankings, but it was a week filled with convention coverage and sporting events. All we can reasonably conclude from that is that neither show had better than a 2.5 household rating or more than around 3.8 million viewers. My guess is quite a bit less for both shows, but that's speculation.
Update 9/9 Late: Variety is reporting that the initial airing of True Blood drew 1.4 million and would likely add another 700,000 viewers with its 10:30pm rebroadcast.
huh? sue naegle got the job in april. 5 months ago. she’s developing new series now but true blood was not one of them. it was in production long before she showed up. and entourage is an existing series. if these fail… it shows how someone new was needed. the performance on sunday has very little to do with her.. we won’t see her stuff until next year.
it does have something to do with scheduling and promotion. that i’ll give ya.
Tom, Naegle brought True Blood to HBO in her capacity as a talent agent. So yes, it was in production before she got the new gig, but she was repping it even then.
Isn’t that Sarah Connor show over with who watches that, like Prison Break why watch that garbage!watch funny stuff on tv instead so you’re week could go great!
Gotta agree with you there, Pat!
robert… i understand that but being a talent agent repping a show and a writer is way different than running a network. one job is sell sell sell the other is buy buy buy
Tom, I agree, and it’s a weird situation where she now has to live with buying what she was selling. Still no word onTrue Blood’s ratings…
Terminator is great and I watch it. It’s not garbage!! What you watch on TV should have no bearing on your outlook on life. It’s TV! Plus, have you ever watched the show? You cannot really comment on something you haven’t experienced. It sounds like you are just closed minded and biased to sitcoms.
True Blood resembles the show Heroes at first glance (just rented the first episode from Blockbuster), though it still feels mostly original… for some reason this show makes me want to eat Cajun food and drink cheap beer