April is here and winter is still coming, but HBO scored its most-watched show since June 2007 on Sunday night.
The fourth-season bow of Game of Thrones amassed 6.6 million viewers in the 9 p.m. hour, according to Nielsen data, making it the premium network's most-watched show since The Sopranos' series finale on June 10, 1997.
The premiere delivery represented a 52% jump from Game of Thrones' third-season debut and a 23% jump from that campaign's finale.
GOT added an additional 1.6 million viewers during its 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. encores for a gross audience of 8.2 million viewers for the night. Last season, GOT averaged 14.4 million viewers per episode across varied platforms, according to HBO officials.
The series provided a strong lead-in for the launch of Silicon Valley at 10 p.m., which averaged 2 million watchers, the most for an HBO half-hour in nearly five years, since Hung started with 2.8 million viewers in 2009. The comedy drew another 534,000 viewers over two replays bring its total gross audience to 2.54 million.
The third-season premiere of Veep was voted on by 955,000 viewers at 10:30 p.m., slipping 3% from its sophomore-campaign's concluder. Veep added an additional 539,000 viewers across two replays, expanding its gross viewership to 1.5 million. Season two of Veep played before an average of 3.9 million watchers per episode, when encores, multiplex and delayed viewing was accounted for.
