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A new hit for HBO The second-season debut of 'True Blood' draws 3.7M Jun 17, 2009 Two years after “The Sopranos” left the air, it looks as though HBO finally has a worthy successor. The second-season premiere of “True Blood,” the premium cable network’s vampire drama, drew 3.7 million total viewers Sunday, the biggest audience for a scripted series on the network since “Sopranos” ended. That was more than double the 1.4 million who tuned in for the season one premiere last year, and it was up 51 percent over the show’s first-season finale. It was the most-watched show on HBO since “Sopranos” drew nearly 12 million viewers two years ago. Even the show that premiered after “Sopranos,” the short-lived “John From Cincinnati,” managed only 3.4 million viewers. It ends a long dry spell for HBO, which has struggled to program another show with even half the buzz of its early-2000s hits “Sopranos,” “Sex and the City” and “Six Feet Under.” Several programs that have premiered in the past two years, including “John,” were canceled, and others, like “In Treatment,” got critical kudos but low viewership. The big numbers for “Blood” came after a huge marketing push by the network for season two of the critically acclaimed show. HBO ran a cross-promotion with BMW’s Mini USA in which the sleek car marketed itself to vampires in both print and out-of-home ads. It also posted blog entries on Gawker supposedly written by a vampire and bought the first full-page ad wrap for the Los Angeles Times. The brand-building campaign apparently worked. In addition to the 3.7 million viewers for the 9 p.m. premiere, “Blood” drew an additional 1.4 million for an encore of the debut at 11 p.m.
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