‘When Calls The Heart’ & ‘Dirty John’ Set Ratings Records In Holiday Week

Hallmark Channel’s staple When Calls the Heart and Bravo’s new anthology series Dirty John both set new ratings highs for their respective networks last week.

A two-hour When Calls the Heart holiday special on Dec. 25, which is kicking off the frontier drama’s sixth season, was the most watched scripted telecast on cable by a mile the week of Dec. 24-30, drawing 4.8 million viewers (Live+3). In adults 18-49 and 25-54, When Calls the Heart: The Greatest Christmas Blessing was #3 with 860,000 and 996,000 viewers, respectively.

This was the most watched/highest-rated When Calls The Heart episode ever and Hallmark’s highest rated series telecast to date. Season 6 will continue its run in February.

.

Meanwhile Dirty John, which already set a new benchmark as Bravo’s highest rated scripted series debut, averaged 2.9 million viewers, 1.2 million of them adults 18-49, 1.5 million adults 25-54 (Live+3) for its sixth episode on Dec. 30. It was the highest rated episode of the series across all key demos, ranking as Bravo’s highest-rated scripted series telecast ever.

Dirty John, starring Connie Britton and Eric Bana in Season 1, was the #1 scripted series on cable among all key demos last week and #1 in total viewers behind When Calls the Heart. The anthology already has been renewed for a second installment.