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Deadline reports that the episode garnered a gross audience of 5.8 million viewers Sunday night, across its four plays — up from last season’s debut night haul of 5.6 million viewers. At 9 PM, viewership averaged 4 million viewers — down about 500,000 compared to its sixth-season premiere – with another 1 million, 498,000 and 262,000 added at 10 PM, 11:30 PM and 1:00 AM, respectively. Theyalso note that last season, the vampire drama logged an average gross audience of 10.7 million viewers.
The series has been a game-changer for HBO and contributed to their commitment to genre storytelling, opening doors for Game of Thrones…but it’s been flailing for a while now creatively and last year they changed showrunners twice — once when series creator Alan Ball left to develop other shows for the network and once when his replacement was ousted after only a few episodes.