Last year ventriloquist Jeff Dunham's Christmas special set ratings records for Comedy Central. Last night he did it again with the debut of The Jeff Dunham Show which averaged 5.3 million viewers and the most-watched series premiere in Comedy Central's history.
The show also posted records for a Comedy Central series premiere in adults 18-49 (a 2.6 rating rating, but I'm checking to see whether that's just a coverage rating, if so, it could drop down to ~2.2 when compared with the overall TV audience).
Another 2.6 million average audience watched the encore of the show to bring the night's total to 7.9 million.
Your kidding.
The show is great, and I know its gonna get even better since people are used to his standup. Its a 30 minute special every week!
No way. That can’t be accurate. That’s just…mindblowing. Somewhere, Jeff Gaspin weeps.
That’s pretty good, and shows that CC marketed it very well. I know I would have tuned in if I did not already view a screening of it. I don’t believe that the next episode will drop off much from this one. The series could have big potential.
Very funny and the promo for next week looks even better. Looks like this show will only get better as the season goes on!!
Seriously? I don’t get it. He must have some kind of following.
Dunham is only doing in TV what he’s been doing on the stand up circuit for years. He gets sneered at by the comedy “community” for being hokey or whatever. But ask any stand-up comic who’s performed on a bill with him. The guy KILLS it, consistently. No one wants to follow him on stage. His fans are incredibly devoted and very diverse.
I like Dunham’s stand-up a lot. He’s honestly the funniest comedian of our time. People may call his puppets “hokey” but he’s so talented at it, the just come alive. He also has some really great material. I haven’t watched his show, but I’ve seen clips and it looks brilliant.
@JDog: I completely agree.
Comedy ‘snobs’ obviously will not enjoy his act; but his act has worked. Network fans are going to hate this series because quite simply a show like this will take away fans from other shows; however, this show is scripted and has writers. I’d think the scripted enthusiasts would be ecstatic about the success of this.
But of course it goes into the divisioning of Network vs. Basic Cable. That a Basic Cable channel can pull numbers like this and even if it drops moderately has to be infuriating to the networks. Cable has the abiility that perhaps networks are still to shy to do, and that is let the show and producers do its thing. NBC is notorious for getting his hands into the mix, and Comedy Central I think has shown that a hands off approach provides a much better viewing experience.
Ya know, I was gonna say, “You’re kidding”.
This wasn’t horrible…kinda childish, and nothing to keep me tuned in, but not horrible. For me, that’d be Parks & Recreation. I downloaded it to see what it was.
And yeah, he DOES have a following. Hasn’t this guy been on The Opry several, several times?
God help us all.
Dam good first episode premiere ratings. Good for Him!
As a comedy snob, I sincerely wish for this man’s painful death and the destruction of all recordings of his performances.
@craigward noob.
And again–thats for comedy snobs.
But I’d much rather a scripted series an unscripted series… Perhaps for the writer community it would be better off at 10 is questionable…but then again–perhaps it wouldn’t of gotten as much ratings.
But a 10-11 series I would very much favor. An hour long lead in for the daily show i could see very good for Jon and Colbert.
The comedy snobs both probably shy away from Daily Show and Colbert both.
No duh he got the biggest ratings…
his you tube video is like in the top 5 ever!!!!
The only disappointment I had with the show, it was too short.
This really doesn’t shock me too much, and the Christmas special numbers didn’t really either. I remember the DVD of his special right before that sold REALLY well (Like, 1 million copies or something, which is insane for a stand-up special), and (I know this is always a sad example, bear with me) seemingly all of my friends have quoted the Acchmed the Dead Terrorist act at some point htat I’ve known them in the last two years. The man has appeal, and Comedy Central would have been dumb to not give him a series.
That’s dumb. Those puppets scare me. I guess these viewers are mostly young boys who don’t have good parents.
You all are missing the point. He is got very good numbers, and IS running a scripted series. It seems as if you all are worry about the future of network television which you should be. When Cable can pull this and when netowrks counted on three quarters of that audience to be part of their numbers.
Nettworks now have to adapt. They cannot rely on the over-the-air numbers they used to get. 15 years ago, most people I was related to only received over the air programming. Now everyone gets that with basic cable. Unless Cable raises their prices, the networks will continue to trend down.