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HBO’s ‘GoT’ Premiere Handles OTT Stress Test
Sunday’s season five premiere of HBO’s fantasy series Game Of Thrones played well among cable viewers, averaging 7.9 million viewers, said network officials.
The episode is the most watched ever for the series, topping the 7.2 million viewers for its May 6, 2014 episode and up from the 7.1 million the series season four finale generated last June, according to Nielsen.
Season four of Game of Thrones was the most watched series in HBO's history, averaging a gross audience of 18.6 million viewers across numerous platforms and encores.
The episode was the most watched show for the week of April 4 to April 12, easily defeating USA Network’s trio of WWE Monday Night Raw hours, which averaged slightly under 4 million viewers combined.
Overall USA tied with Disney Channel for the top spot among cable networks for the week, with both networks averaging 1.56 million viewers, according to Nielsen. Fox News finished third with 1.47 million viewers, with History’s 1.4 million viewers and ESPN’s 1.34 million viewers closely behind.
Rounding out the top 10 were TNT (1.33 million viewers), HGTV (1.30 million); TBS (1.29 million); Discovery (1.14 million) and Adult Swim (1.06 million).
On a 24-hour basis, Nickelodeon’s 1.2 million viewers outlasted Adult Swim’s 1.20 million viewers for top honors. Disney (1.19 million viewers), Cartoon Network (1.07 million) and USA Network (961,000) rounded out the top five slots.
USA was also tops among adults and women 18-49 for the week, while HGTV was the top choice for women 25-54, according to Nielsen.
