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AMC's Mad Progress
by Sophia Banay
Jul 29 2008
Jul 29 2008
Mad Men had an impressive season premiere. Now it just has to keep it going to catch other cable hits.
A back-of-the-napkin analysis of how much the show could net if the Weinstein brothers decided to sell it. Read More
Sunday night's season premiere of Mad Men, AMC's breakout show about a buttoned-down 1960s-era advertising firm, scored a record number of viewers—over 2 million—for the series.
That total was more than 400,000 higher than Mad Men's season one premiere, which generated 1.6 million viewers last July, and more than double the first season's average number of viewers per episode, just 925,000.
Despite that impressive growth, Mad Men was kind of slapped around by Lifetime's Army Wives and USA's In Plain Sight—both of which easily more than doubled Mad Men's viewers.
Still, the show is providing an important edge for AMC, a cable channel whose programming includes 12-hour Chuck Norris marathons anchored by the Missing In Action trilogy. It gives the Rainbow Media-owned station the kind of strong foothold in original programming that The Closer gave TNT and is now table stakes in the cable business.
Compared to last season, Sunday's numbers lay a strong foundation. Last summer, only four episodes out of 13 aired with over 1 million viewers.
Call it the Emmy effect.
"I'm not surprised at all," says Brad Adgate, senior vice president at media planning and buying agency Horizon Media. "I think getting 16 Emmy nominations right before the premiere of a show is going to give anybody a shot in the arm."
What's more, Adgate doesn't expect the Emmy pop to be a one-time boost to Mad Men's viewership. Instead, he predicts that the numbers could prove sustainable for the network now that the show has achieved mainstream recognition via its multiple Emmy nominations and heaps of critical acclaim.
There's potential upside. The Closer averages 5 million to 7 million viewers per episode, numbers that are propelling cable's most popular scripted series into territory formerly the sole province of the network channels.
For instance, Sunday stalwart Army Wives recruited 3.6 million and In Plain Sight snagged 4.2 million pairs of eyeballs, making it the most-watched scripted cable show in Sunday's 10 p.m. time slot for which Nielsen has numbers (Showtime, whose Weeds and Secret Diary of a Call Girl had reruns during this time slot, has an agreement with Nielsen not to release ratings).
Winning the ratings race in Sunday's 10 p.m. time slot overall was Dateline's second hour on NBC, with 7.6 million viewers and a household rating of 5.2 percent, compared to Mad Men's 1.4 percent. On ABC, a rerun of Desperate Housewives ensnared 3 million viewers, and a new episode of CBS's Flashpoint scored almost 4 million.
Still, that's old-school network TV. In the world of cable comers, we're betting there won't be anything "mad" this week about the men and women working in AMC's New York headquarters.
That total was more than 400,000 higher than Mad Men's season one premiere, which generated 1.6 million viewers last July, and more than double the first season's average number of viewers per episode, just 925,000.
Despite that impressive growth, Mad Men was kind of slapped around by Lifetime's Army Wives and USA's In Plain Sight—both of which easily more than doubled Mad Men's viewers.
Still, the show is providing an important edge for AMC, a cable channel whose programming includes 12-hour Chuck Norris marathons anchored by the Missing In Action trilogy. It gives the Rainbow Media-owned station the kind of strong foothold in original programming that The Closer gave TNT and is now table stakes in the cable business.
Compared to last season, Sunday's numbers lay a strong foundation. Last summer, only four episodes out of 13 aired with over 1 million viewers.
Call it the Emmy effect.
"I'm not surprised at all," says Brad Adgate, senior vice president at media planning and buying agency Horizon Media. "I think getting 16 Emmy nominations right before the premiere of a show is going to give anybody a shot in the arm."
What's more, Adgate doesn't expect the Emmy pop to be a one-time boost to Mad Men's viewership. Instead, he predicts that the numbers could prove sustainable for the network now that the show has achieved mainstream recognition via its multiple Emmy nominations and heaps of critical acclaim.
There's potential upside. The Closer averages 5 million to 7 million viewers per episode, numbers that are propelling cable's most popular scripted series into territory formerly the sole province of the network channels.
For instance, Sunday stalwart Army Wives recruited 3.6 million and In Plain Sight snagged 4.2 million pairs of eyeballs, making it the most-watched scripted cable show in Sunday's 10 p.m. time slot for which Nielsen has numbers (Showtime, whose Weeds and Secret Diary of a Call Girl had reruns during this time slot, has an agreement with Nielsen not to release ratings).
Winning the ratings race in Sunday's 10 p.m. time slot overall was Dateline's second hour on NBC, with 7.6 million viewers and a household rating of 5.2 percent, compared to Mad Men's 1.4 percent. On ABC, a rerun of Desperate Housewives ensnared 3 million viewers, and a new episode of CBS's Flashpoint scored almost 4 million.
Still, that's old-school network TV. In the world of cable comers, we're betting there won't be anything "mad" this week about the men and women working in AMC's New York headquarters.
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