Mad Men Ratings Up With DVR Numbers But Still Down From Last Year

Following up on word that Mad Men had a pretty dismal final-season debut, there's better news today. Factoring in DVR users who watched the Season 7 premiere episode in the days following Sunday night's broadcast, the total number of viewers shifted up significantly, with a total of 3.7 million viewers tuning in.

Deadline posted the Live+3 viewing stats for the AMC drama, noting that the 3.7 million viewers is a significant bump from the previously reported ratings. 2.3 million viewers tuned in on Sunday night for the Season 7 premiere, down drastically from the Season 6 premiere, which reached an audience of 3.4 million viewers when it first aired. Season 7's updated numbers are up thanks to DVR viewers, but they're still down significantly from last year when we take into account Season 6's Live+3 total viewership (4.5 million). While the gap between last year's total viewers and this year's has been closed a bit, the situation remains the same in terms of the drop in viewers.

So, why are people falling away from the period drama? Are they just not excited about the new season? Are there too many other things airing at the same time? Or is it the split-season that turned people off. Is it possible that some viewers have decided to hold off on watching the first half of the season until closer to the start of the second half? Go ahead and vote in our poll to let us know...

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Here's the preview for this Sunday night's "A Day's Work":

And AMC has also released these photos from the episode, one of which shows Peggy rocking a pretty intense bow tie:

peggy

Next up, we have Cooper, Joan, Moira, Roger and Jim discussing something over coffee...

Coffee meeting

Pete looks suspicious here. Or annoyed. Hard to say.

pete

And Roger doesn't look so happy either...

Roger

Mad Men airs Sunday at 9:00 p.m. ET on AMC.

Kelly West
Assistant Managing Editor

Kelly joined CinemaBlend as a freelance TV news writer in 2006 and went on to serve as the site’s TV Editor before moving over to other roles on the site. At present, she’s an Assistant Managing Editor who spends much of her time brainstorming and editing feature content on the site. She an expert in all things Harry Potter, books from a variety of genres (sci-fi, mystery, horror, YA, drama, romance -- anything with a great story and interesting characters.), watching Big Brother, frequently rewatching The Office, listening to Taylor Swift, and playing The Sims.