Strong Premiere for Men of a Certain Age

TNT launched its new series Men of a Certain Age last night and received encouraging ratings. Over 5.4 million viewers tuned it which made it the biggest series premiere for a cable channel in 2009. It was expected to draw an audience that slanted older but surprisingly also provided an increase in the 18-49 demo over its lead-in The Closer.

While TNT is touting the results to put it in perspective the recently canceled Raising the Bar set the cable ratings record for a series with 7.7 million viewers over a year ago. After a decent first season it struggled in its second losing over half its viewers. Men of a Certain Age may not have opened as big but its fan base is expected to be more stable and should be in position to build on the ratings instead of go into a slide.

General response has been positive and I thought the show was decent for a pilot. Those are generally tough to get a good feel for since they concentrate primarily on establishing the characters, tone, and the base for the story lines. For anyone who has watched TNT over the past several months the ads were pulled right from the pilot which did detract a little from the viewing experience. I tend to enjoy the more subtle and dry comedy and the chemistry between the actors appears to be there. It’ll be interesting to see how the show develops over the next few episodes to see if it has long term potential.