‘Boardwalk Empire’ season 4 starts lower than season 3; we blame ‘Breaking Bad,’ the NFL

We don’t want to sound overly pessimistic and cynical here, but did anyone really expect that we were going to see “Boardwalk Empire” season 4 actually come out of the gate with better numbers than the show’s third season? Despite being visually stunning and well-acted, the Steve Buscemi series has fallen somewhat off of the radar in the past several months. Not only that, but there is just more competition than ever.

Last night, the impressive sort of competition for the premiere episode included a brand-new episode of “Breaking Bad,” a Dallas Cowboys – New York Giants NFL game (always a ratings monster that dominates live viewing), another new episode of “Dexter,” and some delayed programming on CBS including “Big Brother,” which still performs well despite all of the racism this year.

In the end, the 2.4 million viewers that the show drew for the premiere is still a solid 100,000 more than it averaged for season 3, but it is down a sharp 500,000 from its premiere number last year. This is a similar trajectory that “True Blood” was forced to deal with this summer, and “Game of Thrones” right now is the only HBO mega-hit that has numbers increasing year to year.

We don’t want to say that this is the end for Nucky Thompson just yet, though. Since HBO is not commercial-based, they don’t really care so much about live viewers as they do audiences who watch overall over the course of the week. If this show continues to draw around 8 million of them across all of their platforms, we imagine that the executives will still have a smile on their faces.

If you do want to read some more news related to “Boardwalk Empire,” just be sure to click here if you want to take a quick look at the new episode airing this coming Sunday.

Photo: HBO