"Breaking Bad" grabbed big numbers with its return for its final eight episodes Sunday night, pulling in 5.9 million total viewers — a record for the series, and a 102 percent increase over last summer's Season 5 premiere.
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In the 18-49 demographic most important to advertisers, the 9 p.m. airing of "Breaking Bad" drew 3.6 million viewers — also up considerably from the 1.9 million from last year's Season 5 premiere.
The "Breaking Bad" return — the first episode of the series' final eight episodes — was also a hit on Twitter, generating nearly 760,000 tweets during the airing, and 11,799 tweets per minute during its 9 p.m. ET peak.
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AMC's new series "Low Winter Sun," which premiered immediately following "Breaking Bad," couldn't sustain the momentum. The series premiere drew 2.5 million total viewers — a solid number on its own, but the drama lost more than half of its "Breaking Bad" lead-in. This despite the fact that the network teased scenes from next week's "Breaking Bad" during the new show's first commercial break.
The new "Breaking Bad" after-show "Talking Bad," which premiered at 11 p.m., drew 1.2 million total viewers, with 679,000 of them in the 18-49 demographic.