The third and final season of HBO’s “The Newsroom” got off to a very poor start.
Sunday’s episode, which was the first of the show’s premieres to air head-to-head with Sunday Night Football, drew a series low viewership average of 1.21 million. Also disappointing, its adults 18-49 rating clocked in at a paltry 0.5 (since HBO is subscriber-based, adults 18-49 performance is not as relevant as it is for ad-supported programmers; the rating still carries weight for benchmarking purposes).
The performance paled in comparison to those of the season two premiere (0.9, 2.22 million) and season two finale (0.7, 1.67 million).
— HBO followed “The Newsroom” with the premiere of revived “The Comeback.” A flop, the episode drew a mere 0.1 adults 18-49 rating with 300,000 viewers. The season premiere of lead-out “Getting On” performed about as poorly–it drew a 0.1 rating with 309,000 viewers.