My Boys Finds Its Target; Mad Men Misses

TBS brought back its scripted comedy My Boys Monday night (July 30) to numbers slightly better than those from its first season. The show's back-to-back episodes at 10:00 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. averaged a healthy 1.59 million and 1.62 million total viewers, respectively, according to Nielsen Cable Fast National numbers.

Episode One bettered the show's first season premiere in its target demo of adults 18-34 by 4%, drawing 783,000. Episode Two outperformed last season's premiere by 8%, with 818,000. The two episodes combined outdrew the first season's average in that demo by 43%.

The network had waged a targeted marketing campaign to reach the show's intended young, female audience. The median age for last night’s episodes was 29—eight years younger than the show's first season averaged. Also, the series grew from the first to the second episode.

Meanwhile, sister network TNT posted a second week of solid ratings for its new drama Saving Grace. The 10 p.m. episode averaged 5.37 million viewers, down from 6.42 million last week, but still a big draw. The show averaged 1.67 million viewers 18-49 and 2.26 million viewers 25-54 (compared to 1.94 million adults 18-49 and 2.47 million of its viewers adults 25-54 last week).

Elsewhere in cable ratings, AMC's Mad Men dropped off sharply in its second week, from 1.6 million total viewers last Thursday to 1.04 million on July 26 at 10 p.m. And Bravo's Welcome to the Parker premiered in the same night and slot to a small audience: 334,000 total viewers. That's about half of what the network averaged during prime in July (631,000 viewers, up 15% over last year).

For the month of July, non-ad-supported Disney averaged the most viewers in prime, with 2.99 million. It was followed by USA, with 2.58 million, TNT, with 2.55 million, Lifetime, with 1.49 million, TBS, with 1.47 million and Discovery, with 1.38 million.