HBO's Girls premiered its second season last night to 866,00 viewers, which is down just slightly from last year's season one debut (which notched 872,000 viewers). Enlightened, on the other hand, drew 300,000 viewers, which is up from last year's debut, which only had 210,000 viewers.
Neither show did that well.
Hopefully the Golden Globe wins will help Girls next week.
Enlightened is such a good show.
Enlightened is still too damn low. One of the best shows on TV, hopefully the mere fact that it grew will make HBO renew it.
LAst Year premiered behind a hit show that was already establoshed… now it is performing on its own two feet just as well and I expect it to be renewed for a therd and fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh season. Also, it will get above a million viewers starting if not next week, the next week. Easily.
LOL at Girls. Such an overhyped mess.
Also what are the 18 – 49 numbers? Those are all that matter.
Overhyped? Lol. No. It’s gaining viewers and its on its way to becoming a bonified hit.
Also if you watch it you would know how offbeat it is. It is not supposed to be getting the best numbers on TV at all. Its not a mainstream kind of written show.
Girls is gonna be on the air for as long as Lena Dunham wants it to be… As for Enlightened, this will probably be the last season. Sigh. Love that show.
Live viewership doesn’t matter to HBO. They’re not ad supported. So, if the cumulative viewership is 4 million over a week, HBO doesn’t care if people watched it live, OnDemand/ DVR. A lot of the younger viewers watch it after the initial airing.
I don’t understand why this show is so hyped up. I get that HBO only cares about the cumulative viewer number, but this still seems like a pretty crappy number considering all of the buzz it’s gotten.
i caught it on demand before it came on because i had another show on. girls is still a great show.
given how big the globes were this year (meaning people decided to catch repeats of girls) + girls’ 2 big wins, the numbers will probably go up next week and i hope enlightened goes up with it.
@Samuel, look at AMC and Mad Men. Mad Men got only around 900,000 its 1st 2 seasons and AMC renewed because of the buzz.
“Also what are the 18 – 49 numbers? Those are all that matter.”
As noted, not to HBO, they don’t sell advertising.
They want shows that help them get subscribers or keep the ones they already have. We’ve found distilling that into a reliable prediction with publicly available information impossible.
And while it’s hard to make a direct link between total viewership and renewal for premium cable, there’s at least some relationship.
Awards do matter for premium cable.
And its worth noting that pretty much every premium cable show gets two seasons. Typically they get renewed for their second season just before or just after their first season premiere regardless of the numbers.
The first real decision after the initial greenlight is for the third season renewal.
@Bill Gorman, “Awards do matter for premium cable.”
People are crazy if they think HBO won’t renew it for a 3rd year. It gets buzz, and has won awards.
“@Bill Gorman, “Awards do matter for premium cable.”
People are crazy if they think HBO won’t renew it for a 3rd year. It gets buzz, and has won awards.”
While I neither watch the show nor predict cable renewals or cancellations, it’s my understanding they haven’t killed any horses yet, so they’ve got that going for them.
@Bill Gorman,
Judd Apatow said that they are already shooting a 3rd season. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bROKfIZieIk @34:34
“Judd Apatow said that they are already shooting a 3rd season.”
Well, there you go. Treating the horses well seems to have done the trick.
Enlightened is such a terrific show. I hope more viewers find it.
Girls was one of the worst shows on HBO, crappy writing, directing and acting.. I watched 3 episodes and went WTF is that mess.. Hell even Veep was better.
I’ll stick with Game of Thrones or Homeland on Showtime.
But then again awards mean squat because it’s all about kissing behind to the Hollywood elites.