True Blood had solid viewership for its fourth season premiere, but it was a huge surprise when viewership plummeted for the second episode. The premiere received about 5.42 million viewers, while the second episode garnered 2.9 million viewers. That's a 46% drop over one week! While that drop's got me worrying about the future of the vampire drama series, an HBO executive has revealed that he's not worried by the huge drop.
"The numbers were not a surprise at all," HBO's corporate affairs senior vice-president Jeff Cusson told The Hollywood Reporter. "We offered episode two immediately after episode one on multiple platforms including HBO Go and HBO On Demand, as well as our affiliates' broadband portal as well. So there were many opportunities before Sunday night's airing on the linear network to have already seen episode two."
Cusson also placed some of the blame for the drop on the fact that the episode aired the night before July 4. "We're not afraid to put something on even though the levels are expected to be much lower on something like a July 3," he said. "We know that our subscribers will find the program."
Cusson expressed his optimism that the series would "be doing great throughout the [season]."
True Blood's third episode, "If You Love Me, Why Am I Dyin'?" airs Sunday, July 10 on HBO.
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