How did ‘Ray Donovan,’ ‘Masters of Sex’ season 3 premieres fare in the ratings?

Some of the first numbers are in for the season premieres of some of your favorite Showtime series on Sunday night, and for the most part there is a whole lot for the network to be happy about here.

With “Ray Donovan,” Deadline reports that over 1.6 million were able to catch the first episode of season 3 in between the network airing it on Sunday and the variety of ways that the network made it available in advance, including online and On Demand. This is a move that we personally believe is a rather smart one for them. Sure, you are giving away some content for free, but at the same time the hope here is that you can hook some new viewers to actually pay for the show. Now that the network has a lineup on Hulu as well that you can add to your existing service, it is yet another venue that fans can use to check out the show week in and week out.

As for “Masters of Sex,” 1.1 million viewers had a chance to check out the show. Both shows improved slightly compared to this past year, and anytime you can get consistency for a show on any network, it is very much a good thing.

We do assume that both series are going to have a chance to have a longer run on TV. These two are both successful, and it feels very clear that they each have additional stories to tell based on where they are right now.