AMC Crosses the Rubicon

The Sunday night premiere of AMC’s moody espionage drama Rubicon set a high-water mark for the network, becoming the most-watched series opener in its history.Per Nielsen live-plus-same-day ratings data, the two-hour first installment delivered 1.95 million total viewers, handily out-delivering the premieres of AMC originals Mad Men (1.65 million viewers on June 19, 2007) and Breaking Bad (1.35 million viewers on Jan. 20, 2008).Rubicon also averaged 530,000 adults 25-54 during its two-hour debut.At 10 p.m., the latest episode of AMC’s prestige program, Mad Men, served up 2.47 million viewers, down 15 percent from the fourth-season premiere’s 2.92 million viewers. Settling within the customary 15-20 percent dropoff rate most series experience from week one to week two, Mad Men also drew a little more than half (51 percent) of its audience from the target demo, averaging 1.27 million adults 25-54. “With last night’s premiere of Rubicon, AMC is now three-for-three with our original series,” said Charlie Collier, president and general manager of AMC. “Rubicon joins our hit series Mad Men and Breaking Bad—cementing AMC’s Sunday night [lineup] as the place to go for premium programming on basic cable.”Alert viewers may have already tuned in to the first episode of Rubicon some six weeks ago, when AMC ran a sneak preview of the series immediately following the season-three finale of Breaking Bad. On June 13, the one-hour Rubicon teaser averaged 1.07 million viewers on a Sunday night at 11 p.m. EDT., retaining 69 percent of its lead-in. (The Breaking Bad closer drew 1.56 million viewers in the 10 p.m. slot.)The sneak peek was also made available via AMC’s video-on-demand platform as well as on iTunes and Hulu. All told, the early look generated a total 4.6 million views.Inspired by political potboilers of the ‘70s—executive producer Henry Bromell has compared the paranoid machinations of the show to theatrical intrigues like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor––Rubicon stars James Badge Dale (The Pacific, The Departed) as Will Travers, a glum intelligence agent at the American Policy Institute in New York. Searching for answers about a train wreck that killed his mentor and father-in-law, Travers looks for patterns in intelligence gathered by the CIA and other cabalistic spy organizations. The series also stars Miranda Richardson. Beginning next week, Rubicon will move to its regular timeslot, bowing Sunday nights at 9 p.m. EDT/PDT.

Convergent TV

AMC Crosses the Rubicon

Anthony Crupi

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Anthony Crupi