True Blood Raitings Defended By HBO Exec

HBO's corporate affairs senior vice-president Jeff Cusson has insisted that he is not worried about True Blood's recent ratings dip.

Some 5.4m viewers tuned in to watch the season premiere, but the audience dropped to 2.9m for the second episode last weekend.

However, Cusson pointed out that a number of viewers will have watched the installment on the network's on-demand service HBO Go.

"The numbers were not a surprise at all," he 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 suggested that because the episode was available on a number of platforms, it did not matter that it aired on television during the holiday weekend.

"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 added: "It doesn't matter to us either way how people watch it. You know, I think it's important to note [that] True Blood came back with its highest premiere ever for its original episode and [HBO] anticipates the series will be doing great throughout the run."

True Blood continues on Sundays at 9pm on HBO.

Source: Digital Spy

Now did they do raitings on how many people were actually watching it on HBOGO the 1st night??? I know there was a crap load of people watching it then, took me forever to get on the site because the server was so busy!!! Please, This season is going to top all the rest!! They do every year!!!