via press release:
“Spartacus: War of the Damned” Storms out to Second Highest Ratings Ever for a STARZ Original Series Season Debut; Final Season of Starz “Spartacus” Franchise Sees More Than 2.5 Million Overall Viewers Premiere Weekend
The season premiere episode of “Spartacus: War of the Damned” debuted on STARZ Friday, January 25th and produced the second highest ratings performance (5.5 gross ratings point/GRP) ever on a Friday night for a STARZ Original series premiere.
The Friday 5.5 GRP number from STARZ subscribers trails only the 2011 Spartacus prequel, “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (6.3),” but was well ahead of “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” (3.7) and “Spartacus: Vengeance” (4.7).
The opening “Spartacus: War of the Damned” weekend performance audience generated more than 2.5 million P2+ viewers for the premiere episode telecasts January 25-27. (**Late reporting of an additional Sunday overnight/early morning airing was not available at time of release).
Friday night airings, including the debut at 9PM et/pt (930,000), and subsequent 10PM (469,000) and 11PM (443,000) re-airings, generated about 1.84 million Live+SD, P2+ viewers.
The weekend performance was in line with the 2.7 million Live+SD P2+ viewers that viewed the season finale to “Spartacus: Vengeance” during its premiere weekend this past April. “Spartacus: Vengeance,” averaged more than 6 million viewers across multi-platform viewing, including DVR and on-demand.
And to think, this is the final season. Makes ending it early seem stupid now.
Watched it Friday night on Starz. Great episode and bloody as hell.
I know Starz doesn’t have as many subscribers as HBO and Showtime. I wonder how this show would have done on one of those networks instead and if it would have lasted longer than 3 seasons.
LOL! Spartacus better be glad its on pay cable because a 930,000 people viewd episode is the lowest its seen since feb 19 2010. And that was in its first season!
well done. looks like the audience has gotten comfortable with the new lead. I’m still upset that this will be the final season.
“gross rating point”??? what the heck is that??? XD
Starz making a mistake ending this.It could go on for years.Even us oldie goldies love it.
@Andrea
GRP refers to the total numbers of all airing for a given night/ nights + Ondemnd etc. aka the only numbers pay cable cares about. The premier numbers for a single telecast mean nothing to them.
Spartacus’ 10pm and 11pm ratings were impressive, I wonder if airing at 9pm dented its ratings as Starz have aired their originals at 10pm and not 9pm.