'Dirty John' Finale Hits Highs, 'True Detective' Premiere Ratings Rise In L3
Nellie Andreeva
Co-Editor-in-Chief, TV
@DeadlineNellie
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January 18, 2019 4:24pm
Jordin Althaus/Bravo
Bravo's Dirty John ended its run in style, with its Season 1 finale rising to 3.3 million Live+3 viewers, 1.3 million in adults 18-49 and 1.6 million in 25-54. These were season highs for the anthology series, up +10%, +15% and +13% from the penultimate episode, respectively.
Dirty John joins BBC America's Killing Eve as the only new cable series 2018 to date to grow every week but one in total viewers. From premiere to finale, Dirty John's audience grew +1.2M in total viewers, +513k in P18-49 and +611k P25-54 (L3). That is encouraging news for basic cable networks that they can successfully launch and grow serialized, thriller drama series, a prospect that has been put in doubt in light of You's lackluster ratings performance on Lifetime before it exploded in popularity on Netflix.
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During its run, Dirty John was the 2nd highest-rated scripted series basic and premium cable among P18-49 and P25-54, behind only the midseason finale of The Walking Dead, and ranks as 2018TD's #2 new cable scripted series (basic and premium) in P18-49 behind FX's Sons of Anarchy spinoff Mayans MC.
In total audience across the first month (episodes 1 – 3), Dirty John delivered 3.9M total viewers on average.
Meanwhile, after a modest linear Live+same day premiere, the debut of HBO's True Detective has almost tripled its debut audience in multi-platform L+3 viewing. The first episode of True Detective has amassed gross audience of 4 million viewers across HBO platforms.
For comparison, the second season opener of True Detective, which debuted just two months after the launch of HBO's SVOD services HBO Now/HBO Go which now account for a sizable portion of HBO viewing, went up from 3.2 million to 6 million over the same period (Season 2 of True Detective also benefited from directly following blockbuster hit Game of Thrones in the Sunday 9 PM slot.) The Season 1 premiere rose from 2.3 million to 4.9 million viewers. As can be expected, the Season 3 opener is having the largest % gain and is now catching up with the Season 1 overall delivery.
Dirty John