Debuts of Showtime’s Tudors, Tracey Ullman Rate Strong

Ratings Also Robust for HBO’s John Adams, Lifetime Movie Network’s The Capture of the Green River Killer, Nickelodeon’s 2008 Kids’ Choice Awards

By Anne Becker -- Broadcasting & Cable, 4/1/2008 5:19:00 PM

Season two of Showtime’s The Tudors premiered to 768,000 viewers at 9 p.m. Sunday, down 12% from its season-one premiere when it was at 10 p.m. but up 65% from season one’s finale.

With a rerun at 11 p.m., the show drew a combined audience of 1.02 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

The pay cable network’s new series, Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union followed The Tudors at 10 p.m. with 776,000 total viewers over two plays of the same half-hour episode. The show reran one more time that night for a total of 907,000 viewers. By comparison, the network’s Californication premiered last August to a total of 795,000 viewers on its premiere night.

Meanwhile, on HBO that night, John Adams pulled in 2.2 million viewers for its fourth of seven installments Sunday, up from 2.1 million last week.

Lifetime Movie Network broke its own record ratings Sunday with the first half of its The Capture of the Green River Killer miniseries and followed that up Monday night with 12% audience growth for part two, drawing 2.4 million viewers.

Elsewhere in weekend ratings, Nickelodeon’s 2008 Kids’ Choice Awards pulled in the most kids 2-11 and total viewers in its history, with 3.8 million and 7.4 million, respectively. The show has grown its ratings each year since its 2003 debut. This year, it was hosted by Jack Black and helped Nick.com to its most trafficked day ever, according to the network.