What do you get for $25 million? For AMC and Mad Men, about a million pairs of eyeballs. The season 2 premiere of the much-lauded-by-critics, not-as-much-watched-by-people drama drew about 1.9 million viewers. That’s not much by broadcast network standards—or even by TNT network standards—but it’s more than double the show’s average audience of 915,000 viewers.
At least by my unscientific critic’s gauge of audience interest—the number of friends and colleagues begging to borrow my DVDs—the level of attention to the show certainly seemed higher this year. I’d like to think my eloquent critical praisesongs were the reason, but that gajillion-dollar ad campaign may have had a thing or two to do with it too.
