Magic City Premiere Ratings Seem Low But Early Previews And On Demand Improve Its Numbers

Between early previews and online releases, it’s getting more and more difficult to gauge the success of certain TV show premieres. The ratings are in for Starz’ new drama series Magic City, and while they look especially low, even by pay-cable standards, the premiere wasn’t exactly the first opportunity viewers got to see the series opener.

Deadline posted the news that the Jeffrey Dean Morgan starring period drama Magic City premiered to an audience of 295,000 viewers. Factoring in later airings on Friday night, the series drew a total of 423,000, which is still significantly lower than the 1.05 million Boss took in for its opening night. But it should be taken into account that Starz previewed the series premiere of Magic City the Friday before, following the finale of Spartacus: Vengeance, and at that time, it earned 730,000 viewers in Live+3. Between that, the official premiere, and the on-demand viewing of the episode, Starz says 2.5 million people have seen the premiere episode so far. By that count, things aren’t looking so bad for the series. We’ll have to wait and see how the numbers continue to shake out going forward.

In the meantime, those looking forward to the second episode of Magic City can check out a preview below.

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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.