Sunday’s Dexter averaged 1.7 million viewers or about as many as Mad Men’s 1.723 million.  The difference?  AMC is available in roughly 95 million homes, while Showtime is only in around 21 million (based on Nielsen estimates from September).

The 1.7 million represents a series high for Dexter which this year has John Lithgow in the cast.

Update: Here is the press release from Showtime noting that it was the most-viewed single telecast since 2004.  But they also mix and match and don’t even list the 1.7 million, instead using “over 2 million” which must include ~300,000 for the encore. 

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The debut of USA’s light and fun crime series, White Collar averaged 5.4 million Friday night at 10pm.  Comparisons to other USA shows that debuted in the summer or not on Friday nights don’t make much sense to me, but the shows numbers were double that of The Starter Wife in the same slot a year ago.

I haven’t seen the numbers out to three decimal places yet, but will no later than tomorrow.  Those planning on entering the White Collar guess the ratings contest for this coming Friday’s episode might want to wait for all three digits before posting your guesses (though dozens of people have already guessed even before they saw the 5.4 million).  Update:  it appears for the 71 minute premiere it averaged exactly 5.400 million.  Earlier in the night Monk averaged 5.419 million…

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.

HBO today announced it has renewed its Emmy-winning drama In Treatment for a third season.   Gabriel Byrne will return in the role of Paul Weston.

There was some question over the return  because the Israeli show it was based on (and whose scripts were modified) only ran for two seasons.  And it is a pretty big production run with 35 episodes in the second season and even more in the first.  Doubt was cast over whether HBO would want to incur the expense of writing new scripts.  More speculation ensued when Warrent Leight who was the showrunner in the second season departed for other pastures.  The show was nominated for three Emmys under Leight’s watch, but Leight had declared the work grueling.

Casting on the other roles expected to begin shortly, and production is expected to begin in early 2010 with the series airing on HBO later in the year.

Anya Epstein, (”Tell Me You Love Me”) and Danny Futterman (”Capote”) will take over as  executive producers/co-showrunners.

I still haven’t seen the first season but watched all of the second and really enjoyed it, so I’m glad they’re giving it another season.

It was a surprise to Robert and I when a press release we posted last season about Bravo’s Real Housewives of Atlanta got so much traffic, and we became well acquainted with the fact that NeNe [Leakes] was “da’ bomb”.

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Last summer Bill wrote about how many cable networks were abandoning their roots to grab more audience.  Now comes word that The Weather Channel will be airing feature films.   That’s right, The Weather Channel will be airing movies.

Ok, sure, they will be movies with some kind of weather tie in, so it’s perhaps not as drastic as some of the moves by other networks.  But still, movies.  On The Weather Channel.   From the press release:

ATLANTA (October 20, 2009) – For the first time in its 27-year history, The Weather Channel® (TWC) will add movies to its programming schedule with “The Weather Channel Presents…” This new movie series launches Friday, October 30, with the TWC premiere of The Perfect Storm, starring George Clooney, which coincides with the anniversary of the ferocious “perfect storm” of 1991, on which the movie was based.

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Don’t get me wrong, anything can happen, but not before this summer as TNT has announced its plans to run the final 3 episodes of the current season of The Closer beginning December 7.

Reports are that if TNT picks Southland up, it would make one 13 episode season out of the 7 episodes from last season and the six unaired episodes from this season.  I can definitely see that happening.  But it seems unlikely to happen before summer.  If a decision on whether to produce additional episodes has to wait that long, I don’t see it ever happening as those involved on the show will have moved on to other gigs.

Not surprising that cable news networks have seen overall ratings declines vs. last year’s pre-election period. Non news cable ratings were flat for the same period.

In the first three weeks of the season — September 21 to October 11 — cable lost 5% among its three major demographic groups: 18-34, 18-49, and 25-54 viewers, according to new research from media agency group Group M using Nielsen Company data.

Cable network viewers 18-34 dropped to a collective 15.34 million, down 5.2%; the 18-49 audience went to 16.95 million, off 4.7%; and 25-54 viewers sank to 4.6% to 18.08 million.

Virtually all the loss came from cable news networks, which are witnessing lower ratings as a group versus that of the big upswing in viewers a year ago, due to the presidential election. Cable news networks have lost a massive 61% of their 18-49 viewers as a group and 54% of their key 25-54 viewers as a group.

Taking out those news networks — Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and Headline News — other cable networks are seeing virtually flat viewership with a year ago.

“Looking at the first three weeks of the season, this only happened once in the last six years, and that was in 2006-2007,” says Lyle Schwartz, managing partner and director of implementation research and marketplace analysis for Group M. “But by the end of that 4th quarter [ratings] had rebounded to basically flat, which is probably what will happen again this season.”

Broadcasters don’t have much to cheer about in all of this. The five-network average shows declines as well — 4% slippage in each of its main view categories — 18-34, 18-49, and 25-54 — sinking to 9.29 million; 11.23 million, and 13.12 million viewers, respectively.

via MediaPost.