Tuesday, January 6, 2015

'Downton Abbey' Season 5 Premiere on PBS Averages 10.1 Million Viewers

Downton Abbey Season 5 premiered to a huge audience on PBS.
Sunday’s Season 5 premiere of Downton Abbey on PBS' Masterpiece delivered an average audience of 10.1 million viewers tuned in for Sunday’s premiere (Nielsen Fast National data, 6.1 household rating). Downton Abbey on Masterpiece remains the highest-rated drama in PBS history.

The fifth season premiere of the Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG Award-winning series, a Carnival Films/Masterpiece co-production, is the second-highest rated episode of the series to date, nearly even with the Season 4 premiere (10.2 million viewers, 6.2 household rating – Nielsen Fast National, Live+Same Day). Between 9:00-10:15 p.m., PBS was the second most-watched network on Sunday (based on weighted metered market program averages).

Viewership for the premiere remained solid throughout the episode’s one-hour, 15-minute duration. Many of these viewers stayed to watch THE MANNERS OF DOWNTON ABBEY, a one-hour documentary exploring the world of English etiquette with host Alastair Bruce, historical advisor to “Downton Abbey.” Viewership for the program was 250 percent above the season-to-date time period average for Sunday nights from 10:15-11:15 p.m.

“We’re incredibly excited that Downton Abbey's fans came out in force for the premiere of what has become a cultural phenomenon. We'll also be looking at time-shifted and online viewing over the next few weeks as the season progresses,” said Beth Hoppe, Chief Programming Executive and General Manager, General Audience Programming, PBS. “We’d like to thank our partners at Carnival and Masterpiece, the fans who have made Downton Abbey a post-holiday treat, and the many PBS stations around the country who helped make Sunday night a success.”

Downton Abbey has great ‘legs,’ as they say on Broadway!,” said Masterpiece executive producer Rebecca Eaton. “We are proud and grateful to be part of a series that is so impeccably acted, scripted, and produced. No wonder it has won the hearts of millions of viewers.”

Gareth Neame, executive producer of Downton Abbey, and managing director of Carnival Films, which produces the series, added, “America has whole-heartedly embraced the Crawley family and those who serve them since the first season of ‘Downton’ and we are very appreciative. We're thrilled to have season five, of which we are quite proud, off to such a strong start. On behalf of the actors, producers, crew and our good partners at PBS, thank you for continuing to make ‘Downton’ one of the most watched television series in the world.”

According to Nielsen, a Twitter TV audience of 1.6 million people saw more than 48,000 tweets during the premiere evening, generating a total of 6.3 million impressions and making it the #2 primetime series episode, ranked by Unique Audience.

The new season is available for streaming free on PBS station websites, the PBS Video Portal and PBS’ apps on Xbox, Roku, FireTV and Apple TV for a limited time after each national broadcast. Online excitement has been building for Season 5 over the past several months, with nearly 2.2 million streams of previews and clips across all PBS platforms leading up to the Season 5 premiere. (Source: Google Analytics 9/22/14 – 1/4/15)

There were more than 635,000 streams of Downton Abbey Season 4 full episodes across all PBS platforms in the month leading up to the broadcast premiere of Season 5. Nearly 60 percent of Season 4 catch-up viewing occurred in the seven days before the broadcast premiere. (Source: Google Analytics 12/1/14 – 1/4/15)

Amazon Prime members can now stream all four past seasons of Downton Abbey. Amazon Prime Instant Video is the exclusive subscription video on demand (SVOD) home for Downton Abbey.

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