‘The Righteous Gemstones’ Debut Ratings Answer HBO’s Prayers; ‘Succession’ Stays Strong
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HBO received a blessing of sorts from the TV Gods this past weekend with the premiere of megachurch comedy The Righteous Gemstones and the second episode of the second season of Succession.
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Coming in almost the same as the series high of the August 11 Season 2 debut, the Brian Cox-led global media moguls drama snared 603,000 viewers for its August 18 “Vaulter” episode.
Dipping just over 1% in the initial linear audience from last week’s Season 2 “The Summer Palace” airing, the second episode of Succession’s second season went up a touch over 1 million viewers when replays and digital platforms are added. Down 17% in total sets of eyeballs from the Season 2 opener, the Jon Brown-penned “Vaulter” is nonetheless the second most watched episode of Succession ever to date.
All of which set the stage quite nicely for the start of Danny McBride’s latest comedy on Sunday night at 10 PM – and the premium cabler’s prayers seem to have been heard. The half-hour satire, with a John Goodman-led family of very successful and very rich TV preachers, averaged 593,000 viewers. Or put in another pew, that’s the best any comedy premiere has done on HBO since the last time McBride had a new show: Up against the Season 3 premiere of Power on Starz, the McBride-co-created Vice Principals scored a crowd of 1.15 million when it opened on July 17, 2016.
This latest Righteous offering from McBride ended up with 844,000 viewers when all of the other airings and multi-platform offerings were compiled too.
As the sixth and final season of Power launches on the Lionsgate-owned Starz this coming weekend, the WarnerMedia-owned HBO will be flexing a bit more debut muscle as well. August 25 sees the start of the fifth season of the Dwayne Johnson-fronted Ballers right after The Righteous Gemstones.
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