Cable Hits Summer Highs
By Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 7/29/2007 8:00:00 PM EDT
Cable's sizzling summer romance with Nielsen continues as a pair of programs set network records, while a third became the third-highest original series premiere in industry history.
The debut of TNT's Saving Grace was the most-watched new cable-series premiere of the year. The show — spotlighting Holly Hunter as an intense and cynical Oklahoma City detective who is moving toward redemption via an angel — attracted 4.8 million households and 6.4 million viewers in the 10 p.m. hour on July 23, according to Nielsen Media Research data.
The show, benefiting greatly from a very strong lead-in — 7.2 million watched The Closer that night — retained 88% of that audience.
Grace's performance made it the third-highest ad-supported cable premiere ever in terms of household delivery, trailing only the June 13, 2005, start for The Closer (5.26 million homes) and the July 11, 2004, debut for USA Network's The 4400 (4.99 million).
Grace also dwarfed the initial performance of The Closer's previous lead-out this season. When the Kyra Sedgwick series drew a record 8.8 million viewers with its third-season opener June 18, Heartland — a series about life at an organ donor hospital, starring Treat Williams — retained less than one-half of that total, 4.2 million. Heartland has now shifted to Wednesdays.
Elsewhere, David Beckham's much hyped debut for the Los Angeles Galaxy July 21 drew record viewership for a Major League Soccer telecast on ESPN.
The match against Chelsea FC — in which the famous footballer, who is nursing a bad ankle, played just 16 minutes — netted a 1.0 household rating and 1.47 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
That was the most ever for an MLS game on ESPN or ESPN2, topping the league's first match, D.C. United vs. the San Jose Clash, April 4, 1996, which notched a 1.0 rating and 1.09 million viewers.
Finally, when Amy Finley was crowned The Next Food Network Star on July 22, the Scripps Networks service donned the diadem for presenting the highest-rated cable food series.
The series' third-season finale, which aired at 9 p.m. that night, baked a 2.6 household rating and 3.4 million viewers, according to Nielsen. That performance made it the highest-rated, most-watched telecast in Food's history, according to network officials, and helped boost the show's third-season premieres to a 1.8 household average and 2.2 million viewers, up 38% compared with the show's sophomore campaign.
With The Next Food Network Star heating up, Food officials said it supplanted the third season of Bravo's Top Chef as the top-rated food show on cable.
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