Nellie Andreeva

TNT’s flagship drama The Closer ended its seven-season run last night with 9,075,000 viewers in Live + Same Day to become cable’s No. 1 series telecast for the summer-to-date. Among adults 18-49, The Closer averaged 2 million viewers, its 25-54 tally was 2.7 million. In total viewers, The Closer finale squeaked past the Season 2 closer of AMC’s The Walking Dead to No. 3 on the list of the most watched basic cable series telecasts in Live+Same Day. The TNT drama now claims the second and third spot behind the finale of USA’s Monk (9.4 million) with its 2007 midseason finale and last night’s episode. (In Live+7, The Walking Dead March finale is tops with 11.6million)

Following The Closer‘s finale, spinoff Major Crimes opened solidly with 7,184,000 viewers in Live + Same Day to rank as cable’s No.1 new series launch for the year-to-date. TNT has now claims cable’s Top 3 new series launches of 2012 in total viewers, with Major Crimes followed by the June 13 premiere of Dallas (6.9 million viewers) and the July 9 debut of Perception (5.6 million viewers). Major Crimes‘ demo results were 1.5 million in 18-49 and 2.0 million in 25-54.

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