'Power' Surges With Season 2 Finale

Starz said its drama series Power set a viewership mark with Saturday night's (Aug. 15) season two finale in live-plus-three-day viewing: 2.39 million viewers, surpassing the previous week's episode's 2.29 million. It also grew 50% over the season-one closer, which drew 1.59 million L+3 viewers. This season's numbers were up strongly across the board compared with the first season, Starz said, citing Nielsen.

Power also averaged more than 6.5 million multiplatform viewers in the United States through the first eight episodes of this season, setting a record for a Starz original series (narrowly surpassing Spartacus: Gods of the Arena), the premium programmer said. The show compiled 4.42 million viewers (L+3) over the finale weekend on Starz, also a record, Starz said.

The series, already renewed for a third season, has rated as a top three primetime series (broadcast or cable) among African-Americans this season, Starz said. It stars Omari Hardwick as James "Ghost" St. Patrick, a New York City nightclub owner and drug distributor. It was created by Courtney Kemp Agboh and produced by Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson.

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Kent Gibbons

Kent has been a journalist, writer and editor at Multichannel News since 1994 and with Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He is a good point of contact for anything editorial at the publications and for Nexttv.com. Before joining Multichannel News he had been a newspaper reporter with publications including The Washington Times, The Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal and North County News.