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HBO‘s series premiere of Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom starring Jeff Daniels drew 2.1 million viewers at 10 PM last night. That was an OK performance for the show set at a cable news network, which ranks as one of HBO’s stronger drama series premieres of the past four seasons. The Newsroom, which garnered mixed reviews, was ahead of True Blood‘s 1.4 million for its 2008 debut as well as the premieres of Luck and Treme (1.1 million viewers each) and just behind Game Of Thrones‘ 2.2 million in its 2010 bow. Boardwalk Empire tops the list of recent HBO debuts with 4.8 million in 2010. The Newsroom, which averaged 2.7 million viewers across its two airings Sunday night, dropped off significantly from its lead-in, True Blood, which drew 4.7 million viewers at 9 PM and almost 5 million across two airings.
Related: HBO Makes ‘Newsroom’ Pilot Available To All, Showtime Puts ‘Weeds’ On Facebook
Elsewhere, Lifetime’s Army Wives resumed its sixth season after a break with 3.3 million total viewers, 10% above its the current season average.
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Thanks so much to everyone involved in bringing intelligent, scripted drama back to the tube. Loved the writing, the performances, the fact this was set around the oil spill and reminded us just what a travesty that still is….everything.
Felt they undermined the Mackenzie character in the final scene by the elevator – she’s been in a war zone so would imagine she has balls of steel and wouldn’t become teary when discussing the past. Apart from that, I just loved it.
Thanks particularly to Aaron Sorkin for incredibly smart dialogue and thought provoking subjects. And particular thanks to Jeff Daniels and Sam Waterston for outstanding performances.
Your post is a joke, right? Real people in the real world just don’t talk like that.
This show is nothing more than a (delusional)liberal’s wet dream.
agreed. I can see how some of this contrived dialogue must have sounded good in his head but it doesn’t work on screen. Plus there are so many feeble attempts at comedy, corny pratfalls–Sorkin’s writing appears old. He’s too big a star to hear the truth-an I think he ran ruffshod over his director–the performances suck
“Liberal”? You obviously didn’t even see the show. The main character is a Republican and both parties are attacked mercilessly. Try watching a show before you embarrass yourself with a comment next time.
Obtuse much? Sorkin uses a liberal Republican character to decry Conservatives and the GOP.
“The main character is a Republican”… yes, a Republican that thinks his own party has gone insane. In other words, the only kind of “good” Republican. This is Aaron Sorkin we’re talking about, the guy that made The American President and The West Wing. No one is fooled.
When people like Sorkin right Republicans, they are portrayed as crooked, stupid, evil, md self-serving, pr they are what we saw in this show. A Republican who is against everything his party does. That’s how narrow minded people like Sorkin who live sheltered lives in Hollywood see the world.
He really hasn’t the first clue. And I’m sure no one around him has the balls to tell him when he’s wrong.
Well, I’ve got enough balls to tell you that, first of all, it’s spelled write, not right, and secondly if you had watched the show, he calls liberals losers as well. And, if you had watched the show, you could see that if this was based in the 80′s he’d actually be a die hard Republican, like I was. The problem isn’t that people like Jeff Daniels’ character have become more liberal, it’s that the party has moved farther and farther to the right (proper use of the word).
And considering your attack on “those who live in Hollywood”… Now who’s lumping everyone into a category?
“Sorkin” is polishing his oscar and bathing in a pile of cash like scrooge mcduck while you’re up at night trying to bash him on the internet. joke’s on you dummy.
This reply is for Mark. I did see the show, and maybe if not for Episode 3, I could see your point. But just because the main character claims to be a Republican doesn’t make this a conservative or centrist show. As an independent, I really enjoyed the first two episodes, which I thought were relatively well written and engaging. But then came episode 3 and how do you explain that mess? It felt like I was watching an hour of MSNBC on steroids during a close presidential election when they are out in full Anti-Republican, Tea Party hating glory.
Episode 3 was a complete train wreck. “The Newsroom” completely pulled a “Happy Days” and “jumped the shark.” It was basically an hour of Anti-Republican, Tea Party bashing, liberal nonsense. How ironic that Jane Fonda is playing the conservative owner. I can get this any day of the week by turning on MSNBC.
RIP HBO’s “The Newsroom” 6-24-2012 to 7/8/2012.
I won’t be coming back for Episode 4.
Tea Party and level headed Republicans are two different camps! True, the party has been taken over and represented by Tea Party types and radical right wingers. NOT the party of Lincoln or Reagan and until the level headed conservatives start speaking out, this is what we have representing us! I think the character is right on!
I am in complete agreement with your assessment of this ridiculous effort by the network that has so many times produced wonderful entertainment. The dialoguealone should be enough to kill this series for any intelligent viewer.
Reason #1 your “real people, real world” don’t talk like that is because those people are the ones mentioned in the episode as having been dumbed- down to the literacy of 3rd graders. The “Greed is Good” crowd cannot have competition to dethrone them, so, the Rich and stupid lead the stupid, has been America the past 22 years.
Truth comes in 3 stages said Schopenhauer, “First it is ridiculed, Second , it is violently opposed, Third is it accepted as “self – evident”. With Republicans repeating daily that the Earth is flat and inventing their own set of facts to dispute Science, and Democrats masquerading as moral change agents but in truth having the moral spine of jellyfish,..-15 of them for instance having voted to pass CAFTA along with all of the Repubs.,
Daniel’s character is a quick summary of 50 years of neglect making the USA anything but a first rate country, as he disabuses the College reporter’s notion that the US is something great.
Magnificent opening . Sorkin’s dialogue is indeed smart, bittersweet,.. but acridly pointed,… and what most dittoheads will never understand,….a mirror reflection of a country that has replaced its soul with meanspirited bullies and wimps. Bullies being today’s reactionary republicans, and wimps, being the other guys..
E.R. Murrow, W. Kronkite, C Huntley, D. Brinkley,Presidents Eisenhower, Truman, Nixon, JFK,,,, all leaders who felt it important to give a hand up,..not a hand out to most of America. Journalism was respectable then…
RB
You say it PERFECTLY – amid these people who don’t get it, YOU do.
Thank you for being there and posting. As a radio-television major in the late 60s, studying and learning the way it SHOULD be, I watch this series and ask “what happened?”……..
Excellent post
KK
I agree….”Thrones” was more believable than THIS…
)
I get if you love the show. That’s great. But I don’t get the comment about bringing smart TV back again. What about Homeland, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Treme, The Wire. You’re not intelligent because you’re watching an intelligent show. I hope you realize that.
Aaron….you must stop self-posting!!!
This show was a HUGE letdown. The characters are flat. The dialogue is forced and contrived. The story was completely uninteresting. I made it through the first 45 minutes and just had to turn it off. Sorry Mr. Sorkin. This is a turkey.
When you’re done wiping off your chin, you should thank whoever cast the walking corpse Waterston, whose drunken stumbling provided the only action in this snoozefest, an outing which would have lost nothing if it had been done on radio rather than cable.
What farce. Will never watch again.
always nice to know that the loving left has not moved an inch forward since 1950. I found it tired, predictable and replete with sociailist talking points. But you go booooooyeeeeeee.
suibne
Yeah, that’s why they call us “progressives”, right?! Wow!
You must be one of the writers of the show…..you don’t write like “normal” tv viewers! Also, isn’t it a shame that a show that has well named people in it, producing it, writing it and for HBO having to resort to “constantly putting down republicans” just to show they can. Unfortunately, if programs/movies, etc. relied only on those on the left to watch and support them…..they would sorely not be in business long…as its normally republicans who view the stuff. But what can one think other than what our own president does….divide….don’t let lies get in the way of the truth….and certainly don’t play politics get in the way either. Shame and by the the show was not good either
This is PR disguised as public comment. What a fraud.
You forgot to thank your parents.
Expect the pickup announcement by next week.
Unless a horse dies.
Ha, love it!
I love it more!
I’ll admit it, I laughed.
Right you are. I would have bet ten dollars to a dog turd you were wrong. It sucks, but guess i’m in the minority. Never would have thunk it.
That’s a lot of disappointed people.
It didn’t warrant the bad reviews.
Agreed….it warranted HORRIBLE reviews.
If I want to watch characters giving self-righteous speeches every time they open their mouths just watch a Sorkin project. So tedious…get over yourself.
Mackenzie? Not a good name.
pompous, sanctimonious drivel. Sorkin reminds me why I hate liberals more than conservatives.
So liberals can be a bit preachy. Conservatives are downright evil. No contest.
Your comment proves Howser’s point and you’re likely too oblivious to even realize it. Sad
You must be a writer for the show.
^^^^Great post, Jark. You tell ‘em.
Congratulations, you just proved his point.
I thought the show was great. Not so sure what the bad reviews from THE NEW YORKER and THE NEW YORK TIMES were about. Snappy dialogue, good pacing and great acting by Jeff Daniels. I used to work for a major network news outlet in New York City and Sorkin captured the newsroom environment really well. It looks like he studied Olberman for this show. Excited to see an intelligent show on HBO. This makes GIRLS look like amateur hour.
Girls IS amateur hour.
“I used to work for a major network news outlet in New York City and Sorkin captured the newsroom environment really well.”
hahahahaha…You must have worked for NBC.
I’ve worked at the NY Times, and in TV newsrooms in LA and San Francisco and was a consultant for CBS-TV in NYC and I agree with Jenna who said the show captured the newsroom environment very well. The dialogue was terrific (just enough f-words to make it sound real, but not so many that wanted to say “Enough already with the f-words”). And I found myself tearing up several times, which oughta be some kinda proof that Sorkin knows how to make an (admittedly liberal) viewer feel, huh?
I can’t believe you used Olberman and intelligent in the same context. And the show being a realistic portrayal of a real network news set would not necessarily make it interesting, original nor unbiased.
I had to shut it off at the 27 minute mark. The first ten minutes: brilliant. Goes downhill fast. Never had a gag reaction like that in quite some time.
I had the exact same reaction. Except. I continued watching and it got really, really good.
I thought after the first scene it was – what? But if you give it a chance it became very compelling and turned out to be a show I would watch again.
It got a whole lot more interesting when the show went live. It was treading water with hit and miss comedy prior to that.
So, you thought the show was “brilliant” for the first 10 minutes. But a mere 17 minutes later, that brilliance wasn’t enough to get you to stick around for another half hour. Picky!
I enjoyed the first episode (especially Sorkin’s dialogues) but there were a few places where it lagged. I hope it picks up a bit and doesn’t go the route of Studio 60. Regardless, this thing is better than anything else on network television.
Obviously you haven’t been watching PBS Masterpiece Theater (Mystery or Classic). The best and smartest thing on TV today is a show called ZEN on Masterpiece Mystery. Smart, sexy, great plots and dialogue. Must see TV on PBS.
Been a huge Sorkin fan over the years, whether or not I happened to agree with the underlying agitprop of a particular piece. But he lost me with the “Newsroom” pilot. First of all, what’s this fascination he’s got with ex-lovers thrown together again proessionally? It was a central part of “West Wing” season one (until they kicked Moira Kelly to the curb), then Sorkin trotted it out again as the key relationship in “Studio 60,” and now on “Newsroom” we’ve got this panting horse of a premise yet again. It’s just laziness, not only because Sorkin keeps going there, but because surely there are more imaginative ways to infuse sexual tension into a workplace dramedy than to have Jeff Daniels and Emily Mortimer bicker endlessly about their whiny backstory and expect that somehow viewers will feel the same titilating frisson Sorkin apparently does as he types this stuff. Plus, the pilot felt even more talky that the usual Sorkin, way more plodding in pace and direction, worfully predictable in every story turn, and almost laughably self-righteous. I’ll give this another shot, but remote control firmly in hand.
Picks up right where Studio 60 left off. Not a good omen.
“Studio 60″ started going off the rails when the plots started getting more political. The one about the old Hollywood “blacklist” of the 1950s marked a turning point.
“The Newsroom” is entirely political. ‘Nuff said.
No doubt HBO execs will renew it for season 2 tomorrow, but inside I’ve gotta believe they’re thinking they’ve screwed the pooch on this one.
screwed the pooch? care to explain?
Pseudovertigo, anyone?
Loved the characters. Loved the oil spill storyline.
I didn’t love the overly snappy/witty dialogue. Too much. Too smart for a general audience and too annoying. I wish Aaron would dumb it down a little and not always do dialogue that makes him look like the smartest person in the room. Mainstream America IMO would enjoy it more if it was not always so over the top with the dialogue. To me this is why some of his other TV shows outright failed or waned i.e. The West Wing. When the characters discuss the stories the dialogue and the idealogies are too complex or the dialogue is too highbrow for the average viewer to stay.
The West Wing only waned when Sorkin left after Season 4, which IMO was the best season. Until then, it was a big success. If things have changed so much in the past decade that a West Wing-type show is now “too smart for a general audience,” I think we’re in serious trouble. But, as they say in the Newsroom (which I really enjoyed, by the way), “we can do better.”
You may well be right. And that’s the saddest thing. And you just confirmed everything Will McAvoy’s character said in his ‘vertigo’ diatribe.
Malibu, I don’t mean to offend you with this but perhaps you should watch something else. There are way too many tv series and films in cinemas that are dumbed down. If that’s your thing it’s easy to find, dumbed down is everywhere, let the people who want something smart enjoy the show.
When your lead-in provides 4.7-million viewers, and you produce only 2.1-million, your show is in a lot of trouble.
… and if you believe the reviews, the series gets progressively worse over the first four episodes. I doubt there are many people left by season’s end.
2.1 million viewers for the premiere, my guess is most people won’t be talking about this around the water cooler. This thing is already forgotten.
It was terrible. Such old Pollyanna nonsense. Evil oil companies, Halliburton, America sucks….so much self loathing to make Hunter Thompson potentially proud. What do they need Jeff Daniels for – just put Bill Maher in there and it’s the same show as his? Without all the silly speeches. Just drivel.
You CAN’T gt all those silly speeches on Maher’s show. The level of Iintellect required to pull that off in the real world is substantially above that of his typical progressive panelist.
Done with HBo…Like so many people, we want to be entertained not have either the right, ofr the left’s political agenda thrown down our throats. not to mention, bad version of “Studio 60″.
Man, that was bad. Why do they always create roles for Brits then give them names like Lane and Mackenzie? When Emily Mortimer finally marries Jeff Daniels (eugh) she’ll become Mackenzie McHale McAvoy. Cool!
Funny post, and true. What’s the in-joke with the Mc’s and the Macs and the McMacs? And why why why does Sorkin get away with such tedious sexism? He pretends to write ‘smart’ female characters but in truth they’re always needy and begging and frightened. Mackenzie’s supposed to be a serious war correspondent, right? Shot at and all that. So why so scared of her ex-boyfriend? And the Allison Pill character, jesus! Sorkin loves taking a stab at women like that, loves making them seem like complete morons (look at ‘The Social Network’ — not enough outrage over that, imo). But oh, right, he’s the greatest playwright of the modern age. Wish he’d get over himself. Wish he’d just fail already so we could have some peace.
Co-sign the pattern of stealth sexism. Especially re: The Social Network and lack of outrage. Disappointing and oddly pedestrian from an intelligence like Sorkin – it has dulled his luster.
Boycotting it before it even started. I hope you fail miserably for being disgustingly hypocritical, Mitchells. Hubris is a literary term you should look up, if only to hone your acting skills, because your impromptu interviewing skills remind me of another literary element: foreshadowing. It’s a sneak-peak into your failure as a professional.
Who the heck is Mitchells?
Not even 1% of the population of the u s
Thank you for that observation. Hollywood talks about “big box office” and how popular a movie is. If a $200,000,000 grossing movie is seen by a $7.50 ticket buyer (much more here in NYC, but I’ll go $7.50) and no repeat business, that means 26,666,666 saw the movie. That is less than 10% of the population.
More than 9 out 10 people did not see the “blockbuster”. Bottom line is nobody really cares about Hollywood.
Thank you HBO! I’d been having trouble sleeping. Snoozeroom might put Ambien out of business. Jerry Sandusky will get shorter sentences than this script drug to the table. If human beings actually substituted this hypercaffeinated debate team jargon in place of genuine office conversations, workplace shootings would skyrocket. Most would be justifiable homicide. If this short on horsepower but long on exhaust drivel is even fractionally equivalent to what genuinely goes on behind the scenes of the typical newsroom make-up counter, it’s no wonder the mediots are always a day behind. People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening. The sound of silence has never before been so annoyingly verbose.
You’re dead-on here, for sure. I’d rather step on a rusty nail than endure a repeat of this poorly disguised hate letter to offshore drillers. Jeff Daniels was good, as usual, but in general the phony chatter, and gushy rattling-off of agenda-driven statistics, destroyed his attempt here. That’s a shame.
Newsroom is Sorkin unleashed and now you see why he needs to be put on a leash. pious self-righteous BS words made in a world that does not exist. It will find an audience in the same type of person who believes but is not better than everyone else.
First of all, totally ignoring everyone who played the “I watched 25 minutes and turned it off” card. If you didn’t see the whole episode, where do you get off saying the show was bad? The show had a major shift when the news cycle started. Like it or hate it, you have to see it all to properly comment.
I am a Sorkin lover so take this with a grain of salt, but I loved it. The writing is crisp and sharp. The set up felt a bit contrived at times, but anyone who follows the Sorkin shows (Sport Night, West Wing and Studio 60) should expect that. There is also the expected “Sorkin-slant”, but again, it is to be expected.
And to the people saying “it’s just Studio 60 but in a news room” I say “so what”? That show was excellent and should have been given another season to develop and grow. Had it been given that chance, there might have been one more Network show in the annual Emmy mix.
Yeah, people watch half and then act like they know what they’re talking about. Others don’t watch it at all and call it a “boycott”. People really love to pat themselves on the back for doing nothing.
The show was brilliant. I sat up in my chair and paid attention. My wife actually put her iPad down while watching the show and watched it. She told me people in her office were talking about it today at work. The best part about all the haters is you know as well as I do they will watch every episode. They know it’s good and it kills them. Sorkin is a gifted artist and I’m excited one of the pay cable stations finally got in bed with him.
I liked it, it reminded me of Sports Night that ABC wrecked because they suck at producing good TV. Geezus, the media that is giving it crappy reviews needs to assess their own culpability for the current state of the news.