“Social” studies: Tyler Blackburn and Ashley Benson on ABC Family’s Twitter-hit, “Pretty Little Liars.” (ABC FAMILY)
In today’s cluttered TV landscape, new viewership records are often accompanied by ye olde addendum.
To whit: “ ‘Fill-in-the-blank’ scored the highest viewership ever for a cable series on the second Monday night of a first-quarter month when the temperature on the East Coast was below 50 degrees — but above 45 degrees — and Jupiter aligned with Mars.”
You get the point.
It’s my pleasure, then, to tell you that TNT’s “Rizzoli & Isles” snared 5.6 million viewers in its third-season-premiere Tuesday night — a . . . wait for it . . . basic-cable record for a Tuesday-night premiere of an original scripted drama series (you can exhale now). That was down a bit from last July’s season’s premiere (6.4 million viewers) but in line with what “R&I” averaged last season (5.9 million viewers).
The series, starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander, also averaged nearly 1.6 million viewers in the adults 18-49 demo — which helped the second-season premiere of “Franklin & Bash” (Breckin Meyer, Mark-Paul Gosselaar) score 3.1 million viewers. That was up 12 percent from its first-season premiere last summer.
Meanwhile, the Tuesday-night season premiere of Lifetime’s “Dance Moms” — OK, technically it’s what they like to call “Part 2 of Season 2,” or something like that — averaged 2.1 million viewers. That was up 62 percent versus the show’s Season One average.
“Dance Moms” was also ranked third in the night’s most buzzed-about show on social media — with the top ranking going to ABC Family’s “Pretty Little Liars.” In addition to winning the night in females 12-34 and female teens (among other demos), “Liars” set a record for the “most-social” season premiere in TV — a still-new category — according to SocialGuide, by amassing 534,000 tweets on Twitter, including 100,000 tweets in the show’s first
five minutes alone.
Elsewhere on the cable series front, FX announced that it’s picked up “Legit,” which will premiere next January with star Jim Jefferies, an Australian comedian who’ll play well, a comedian named Jim. It will track Jim’s “misguided attempts to become legitimate in life” as he’s aided and abetted by his best friend, Steve (Dan Bakkedahl) and Steve’s brother, Billy (DJ Qualls).
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Last, but not least:
* CUNY TV (TW Cable/Ch. 75) repeats its 1974 interview with the late Ray Bradbury tomorrow (10 a.m., 3 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.) and on Sunday. The interview was part of CUNY’s “Day At Night” series, hosted by the late James Day. Bradbury died Tuesday in LA at the age of 91 . . . “Judge Judy” (Judy Sheindlin) finished the just-concluded May sweeps as TV’s top-rated syndicated show — averaging a whopping 9.4 million daily viewers . . . Former Olympic gold-medal gymnast Dominique Moceanu talks about her new memoir, “Off Balance,” tomorrow night on ABC’s “20/20” and Monday on “Good Morning America” (7-9 a.m./Ch. 7) . . . A quick shout-out to Linda Shafran (because I feel like it, that’s why) . . . There’s a new Web site, laughcake.com, which allows users to hire professional comedians to record personalized messages and “mini roasts” . . . The world’s most grating and cloying TV movie title? “Operation Cupcake” airs June 16 on Hallmark Channel with stars Dean Cain and Kristy Swanson. Seriously? Somewhere, George Zaralidis smiles (while Cain grins and bears it).