Last Thursday the sixth season of the popular reality TV show Project Runway premiered on Lifetime Television to a record premiere audience of 4.2 million people, 45% greater than last season’s premiere. The show originally launched on Bravo in 2004 to a small audience of  350,000 for its first episode, but quickly prospered over the next five seasons. Early last year it was announced that the show’s producers, Weinstein Co., had signed a deal to move Project Runway to Lifetime Television, leading Bravo’s owner, NBC Universal to file a suit, which was supposedly settled for $150 million.

Last week’s strong premiere is therefore a vindication for the producers, the show and their new network. Of course this audience improvement may have something to do with all the publicity resulting from the litigation, which has probably resulted in more attention towards this season. Other important factors to consider are that Lifetime has a 20% larger distribution than Bravo (96 million to Bravo’s 80 million households) and that Lifetime has been strongly promoting the show. I also believe that broadcast television has provided an overall weak summer lineup (ABC has set new ratings lows twice this summer), giving cable networks an opportunity for cable networks to attract big audiences. Not coincidentally AMC’s Mad Men had a strong third season premiere last week. USA Network has also had a strong summer, both with the third season of Burn Notice and with the debut of its new series Royal Pains.

This season’s audience potential for Project Runway looks good since the series has historically averaged higher than its premiere episode. Lifetime has been slowly been losing viewers during the last six years so the network has a lot riding with Project Runway. Still, it is still too early to tell whether the acquision of Project Runway was a wise decision for Lifetime, simply because of the price tag of $150 million, which may or may not include the production price paid to Weinstein Co. According to TNS Media Intelligence, Bravo sold $12.6 million of advertising spots during Project Runway‘s fifth season, not including “sponsorship or integration fees.” Assuming a 40% growth in audience levels this year, and 5% thereafter, and a proportionate rise in sales, Lifetime would be clearing just around $97.5 million. Of course, this calculation doesn’t include other pertinent revenue streams like carriage fees, sponsorship and online video. It is also difficult to predict how Project Runway‘s presence on Bravo will lift the network’s ratings as a whole. Still, the price tag paid does offer a glimpse into how important the program is to Lifetime.

Update: The day after this post, an article appeared in MediaPost commenting on cable’s hot summer and broadcast’s slow summer:

All ad-supported cable networks are up to a culminated 53.1 million viewers versus 50.0 million a year ago, from May 21 through August 14. Broadcast is down, in part, because of unfavorable comparisons to the Olympics of 2008.