“Entourage” saw no spike for the premiere of its final season; Sunday’s opener performed roughly in-line with the season seven launch.
Season eight opened to a 1.4 adults 18-49 rating with 2.49 million viewers. Though viewership was up slightly from the 2.48 million who watched last year’s kickoff, the demo rating was down from season seven’s 1.5.
To the credit of Sunday’s “Entourage” episode, it received a weaker lead-in than it did in 2010. While season seven of “Entourage” opened after “Hung,” which scored a 1.3 rating and 2.45 million viewers, season eight received support from “Curb Your Enthusiasm” (1.0 rating, 2.37 million).
“Entourage,” in fact, likely provided something of a “halo benefit” for “Curb,” which is bookended on the other side by “True Blood.” “Curb”‘s performance improvement over last week’s showing exceeded the improvement shown by the “True Blood” lead-in (in both percentages and total viewers), suggesting its gains were not linked entirely to “True Blood.”
HBO’s flagship averaged a healthy 2.8 rating with 5.26 million viewers.
