Cable Ratings: AMC’s ‘Breaking Bad’ Hits New Highs, CNN’s ‘Anthony Bourdain’ Down In Return, ‘Crossfire’ Gets Rough Start

NFL Football ruled Sunday night but it was also a good night for Breaking Bad while the Season 2 debut of Anthony Bourdain’s CNN show was down double digits from its Season 1 launch. In its third to last episode ever, the AMC drama broke its own viewership and demo records. Last night’s bloody “Ozymandias” titled episode pulled in 6.4 million viewers total with new highs of 4.052 million among adults 18-49 and 3.59 million among adults 25-54. The Vince Gilligan-created series previous highs were the mid-Season return on August 11 with 5.9 million viewers, 3.3 million adults 25-54 and 3.6 million adults 18-49. On at the same time, the 9 PM premiere of Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown was down from its Season 1 debut on April 14. Facing Sunday Night Football on NBC as well Breaking Bad on AMC, the acerbic chef’s trip to Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza garnered 681,000 total viewers with 242,000 in the key 25-54 demo. That’s a dip of 9% in viewership from Season 1’s debut result of 747,000 and a 14% drop from the 282,000 in the demo who tuned in. Still Bourdain’s return was No. 1 in both categories against its rivals Fox News Channel, MSNBC and sister station HLN.

Meanwhile, Friday numbers for CNN’s revived debate program Crossfire show it dropping 47% in overall audience and 40% in adults 25-54 from its Monday premiere. For Monday’s unveiling, 581,000 people tuned in  — 171,000 of them in the news demo. By Friday 309,000 were watching – 103,000 in the demo. Compared to the previous week in the same timeslot on CNN, Crossfire fell 14% overall and 7% in the demo.