‘Sons of Anarchy’ season 6 premiere sets series high, dominates network competition

“Sons of Anarchy” has long been a ratings beast for FX, but last night the motorcycle drama from Kurt Sutter mauled much of the primetime competition.

Overall, the 93-minute premiere episode “Straw” drew series highs of a massive 3.1 rating in the 18-49 demographic along with 5.87 million viewers. Typically, you see shows that go past 11:00 p.m. Eastern lose some steam when it comes to average viewership. Not here. The show dominated everything else on network TV and cable in the demo, with the next-closest thing being “America’s Got Talent” with a 2.3 over on NBC.

What does this mean? For one, it’s yet another example that network TV is skewing older, and younger audiences are looking for edgy, thought-provoking entertainment elsewhere. Also, it means that Sutter will fulfill a promise that he made earlier this summer to visit the hometown of one lucky fan in order to watch an episode of the show with you and your friends at a local establishment, and to tape the entire event for a special feature in the season 6 DVD. If this is not evidence that Kurt cares about his fans more than just about any other showrunner on TV, we don’t know what is. (It also helps that most “Sons of Anarchy” fans are pretty awesome people, and they won’t be complete losers to hang out with.)

Of course, there will be more competition to the series coming up in the weeks ahead with the premiere of some other shows, but we really can’t imagine anything on network TV all fall equaling the “Sons of Anarchy” rating in the 10:00 p.m. timeslot. The closest thing could be “Person of Interest,” which is moving to a new night following “NCIS: Los Angeles.” As for the overall title of highest-rated show on Tuesday, it will likely have much more competition come September 24; even if “Sons of Anarchy” doesn’t win Tuesday’s #1 show every week, though, we have a hard time thinking that anyone is going to be bummed with the monster numbers that the show is getting.

In case you missed it from last night, click here if you want to read our full review of the season premiere. We’ll have more teasers for next week’s episode in a matter of days.

Photo: FX