TNT’s reboot of the iconic CBS soap opera “Dallas” premiered to whopping viewer numbers Wednesday night, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The premiere airing attracted 6.86 million viewers, the top figure for a cable series premiere so far this year. The solid debut continues a recent tradition for TNT which had strong summer premieres for “Falling Skies” in 2011 and “Rizzoli & Isles” in 2010, the story points out.
“’Dallas’ made TNT the top-scoring basic cable network of the night, with the two-hour premiere even besting broadcast networks between 9 and 11 p.m.,” the story reports. Demo numbers for the two-hour episode included 1.926 million viewers 18-49 and 2.482 million viewers 25-54, TNT’s target demo.
The report adds: “For some historical context, it should be noted that this score marks a nearly 80 percent drop since the last episode of ‘Dallas.’ The 1991 series finale of the original show, which aired on a vastly different TV landscape, took in 33.3 million viewers.
“And those numbers were nothing foreign to the series. 1980’s ‘Who Shot J.R.?’ episode still stands as the second highest rated entertainment broadcast in U.S. history with 41.47 million viewers.”
As a guy who was privileged to have had the opportunity to do a couple of small roles on “Dallas” when it was the biggest show on television, I couldn’t help but wonder if a revival “Dallas” would end up being a good idea or a mistake. When Larry Hagman’s “J.R.” got going last night, I was chuckling while thinking that “Dallas” CAN “come home again”! I LOVED it!!!