Entourage returned with its sixth season premiere July 12, delivering 3.4 million viewers, its largest audience since May, 2007, when it was following one of the final episodes of The Sopranos. That is also more than double the number of people that tuned into the season five premiere in September 2008, which just delivered 1.6 million viewers.
The second episode of Hung improved on its series premiere, despite a one week hiatus due to the July 4th holiday. Hung drew 3.6 million viewers, up 29% from the premiere.
True Blood also posted another series high with 3.9 million viewers. When DVR and on-demand are factored in, True Blood is averaging 10.8 million viewers, up 39% from season one.
via Broadcasting & Cable.
HBO has a killer line-up on Sunday nights! Love all three shows.
Wahoo! Awesome numbers, and I expect True Blood to pass 4 million next week.
Sunday is all HBO! I pity the network that wants to tussle with a pay cable channel pulling in those numbers! Congrats to HBO! Back on top, where it belongs!
finally! HBO is having a GREAT summer. I think True Blood will top 6 million viewers first run for the season finale. It’s growing EXTREMELY fast. And great for entourage and Hung is a new hit!
Great for HBO this summer. What about fall though? They have Curb Your Enthusiasm and Bored to Death. Two 1/2 hour comedies? No big 1 hour drama to anchor the season? Showtime will bounce back at the same time with Dexter.
OMFG gays are taking over the world
Damn, True Blood’s audience just keeps getting bigger. I wouldn’t be surprised if viewership hits 5 million first run by the finale. Great show, and it’s definitely not going through that sophomore slump that some shows go through. It just keeps getting better.
I agree with Nick. This show is more riveting than last year.
They have True Blood to thank for Entourage’s numbers, that show is really awful. I am surprised Hung improved! I thought the pilot wasn’t so good but the second ep impressed me, it was much funnier.
Sorry if I’m repeating this, but since not many people commented on that post about HBO, I’ll post it here. True Blood is HBO’s highest rated show since The Sopranos.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/business/media/13hbo.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
“In “True Blood,” the pay cable giant has its first hit since “Rome,” and the numbers indicate it may be the biggest thing on the channel since “The Sopranos.” If that sounds surprising, it may be because few saw it coming — inside HBO or out.
In the three episodes measured so far this, its second, season, “True Blood” has amassed viewer totals that any network, including broadcast networks, would be excited to own: 12.1 million, 10 million and 10.3 million. And HBO has attracted those viewers from an audience base about a third the size of fully distributed networks.”
“This season, “True Blood” has a first-run Sunday night audience of about 3.6 million, up from two million for last season.
HBO counts audiences across all the platforms that wind up offering the episodes: a repeat on HBO itself, repeats on HBO2 and its video-on-demand channel, replays on digital video recorders and downloads from iTunes.
That is how the numbers grow to more than 10 million. (For perspective, “The Sopranos” finished its first run with a Sunday night audience of 11.9 million, which grew to 14.2 million with the extra viewers added in.”
I’m a bit surprised that Bill didn’t put the pic of Sookie and Tara on top, like for the other TB posts.
I’m thrilled by these numbers, and glad that HBO has success outside of TB, to broaden its appeal.
As for me, Sookie’s my favorite television character right now.
Wow, really glad HUNG went up. I thought it being off the air for that one week was going to kill it for sure. Great news.
Mediafan, that was already right here.
I said I know that. evidently you didn’t read my post. I said I pasted it again because there weren’t many comments. That’s the only reason
I didn’t think Hung was too amazing.
it’s trying to be all artsy and booklike… and winds up having a crappy narrator who’s voiceover takes away more than it adds.
John From Cincy and Deadwood were both far better shows than Hung.
I love all three of those shows on HBO. That is what I am watching on Sunday nights. I was already an Entourage fan and have been a Thomas Jane fan since The Punisher (although I wasn’t too thrilled with his actions at Fangoria). I watched True Blood for the first time this week and I will be watching from now on. I just need to watch the earlier episodes to get caught up. Great job by HBO to put these three shows together on one night.
True Blood, Hung and Entourage are doing great and it good to see HBO making a comeback. On paper, the three shows don’t seem that compatible but it works and I have high hopes for upcoming HBO shows and series.
That and Treme and what’s that Martin Scorsese show coming up?
The Martin Scorsese show is being written by Terrence Winter who wrote many episodes of the Sopranos, and as I understand it is about the early days of Atlantic City.
It sounds like they put together a bit of a dream team for this show and I’d be surprised if it doesn’t do incredibly well.
so are people done comparing showtime and hbo now? It’s obvious that HBO is still the superior network.