Major Crimes ended its explosive summer season on a high note last night, capping off an impressive and consistent showing in the ratings for the last 10 weeks. Last night’s summer finale brought in 4.5 million total viewers, making it the second most watched episode of the summer season. The episode also won the night as the most watched scripted cable program, an honor it has held for its entire 10-week run.
Major Crimes continues to dominate the rest of TNT’s summer programing. In addition to reaching season-high viewership numbers, last week’s episode also won the week as the most watched scripted cable program, easily besting fellow TNT series Rizzoli and Isles, which held the #2 spot, by over 300k viewers, and bringing in almost 2 million more viewers than TNT’s other recently renewed summer series The Last Ship (2.98/0.8). Among the rest of TNT’s summer slate, Major Crimes continued its winning trend, more than doubling the ratings impact of its sister shows on the network, including Monday night lead-out Murder in the First (2.0/0.3), Proof (1.99/0.3), and Falling Skies (1.98/0.5).
Though a full reporting of time-delayed ratings weren’t immediately available, Major Crimes has continued to show strong growth in Live + 3 ratings, with episode 408 growing to 6.006 million viewers thus far, a 37% increase over it’s Live + Same Day impact, and a 4% increase over the prior weeks growth. In key demographics the episode showed even greater gains, with 0.9 million viewers 18-49 tuning in, a whopping 60% increase.
With numbers like this, we have to ask… TNT, what are you waiting for? It’s time to renew Major Crimes for Season 5!