This past Sunday was a weak night for HBO original shows as new half-hour comedy Looking premiered to soft numbers and True Detective lost viewers to football.
Looking's debut only managed 338,000 in the first showing, up to 606,000 with included encore views, reports Variety. Lena Dunham's Girls wasn't able to provide much of a lead-in.
Still the second episode of Girls managed a decent 799,000 viewers for the night. That number is a drop from the premiere episode though, which netted 1.1 million.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, True Detective dipped from its premiere to 1.67 million viewers for the first showing. The Woody Harrellson and Matthew McConaughey-led drama had premiered to stronger numbers at 2.3 million, which was a debut high for a recent HBO program.
Variety notes that some of those lost viewers might be because of football as True Detective would have to have competed with the tail end of the NFC Championship game.
And the numbers could improve when DVR numbers are included, as viewing numbers sharply rose for last week's episode, up to 6.3 million viewers.
HBO doesn't plan on competing with the Super Bowl on Feb. 2 for viewers, so Looking and Girls will instead air on the Saturday night and True Detective won't air at all.
image: Amazon