Last week the fourth season of Mad Men premiered and while the episode was entertaining as always (I am a fan) the ratings were a mere 5% above last season’s premiere. This growth was also significantly lower than previous season premieres: 167% from Season 1 to 2, and 44% from Season 2 to 3. Also of concern is that the 18-49 demo rating remained flat at 0.9 ratings points or approximately 1.2 million viewers.

A great article posted yesterday in AdAge highlights while Mad Men has a relatively small audience, which has equally translated into not so many advertising dollars, it has still been a success since its premium status allows AMC to command higher carriage fees. According to SNL Kagan these are up on average up from 21 cents per subscriber in 2001 to 24  cents today. Similarly, Mad Men’s presence on AMC was obviously an important factor for the recent carriage dispute between AT&T U-Verse and Rainbow Media (subsidiary of Cablevision and owner of AMC); uncoicidentally a settlement was reached less than 10 days before the premiere of Mad Men season 4.

Still, if Mad Men’s ratings have apexed, as the recent premiere indicated, it is critical that AMC look towards other series to sustain the channel’s position in the long run. Breaking Bad, last year’s mini-series The Prisoner and the new series Rubicon, are all indications that AMC is doing precisely that. Rubicon’s premiere last night was actually the strongest ever for an AMC original production so perhaps they’ve finally found a show worthy of filling Mad Men’s shoes, whenever it’s gone. In the meantime I’ll just enjoy the episodes.

On Sunday night my favorite TV show Mad Men ended its third season. It was a terrific finale and I recommend watching it if you haven’t done so already. The episode’s initial airing had an average audience of 2.3 million, about 31% more than last season’s finale, and the highest audience the show has had since this season’s premiere that drew 2.8 million.

On average this season, Mad Men had about 20% more viewers. Last season the show grew 62% season over season, indicating that the program’s audience might be topping out.

Unfortunately I don’t have the average season numbers for the 18-49 demographic, so it’s not possible to draw a similar theories about audience growth in this segment, but looking the 25-54 demo there was only an 8% growth this season. Maybe the audience is indeed plateauing.

These numbers, particularly the season averages, might be misleading. Notice how across all demos, both the premieres and the season finales draw much higher audiences and growth rates. This is logical since audiences are much more interested in not only watching the first and last episode of a show, but are also more likely to see it live. Since these ratings are “Live plus Same Day” (Live+SD) for just the initial episode airings, it is theoretically possible that the viewership is higher for the numbers represented in the season average, once accounted for time-shifted viewing on DVRs or through VOD services, or for viewings of other airings. In other words, I bet that the relative difference in between Premiere/Finales and “in-between” episodes is much higher in Live+SD than in Live+7.

UPDATE: According to a recent MediaWeek article, Mad Men overindexes in C3 ratings, indicating that the show’s audience does lean toward timeshifted viewing. This lends more weight to my theory that the audience for “in-between” was probably more even with premieres and finales, once total viewing was accounted for.

In any case, while Mad Men is a very successful and highly admire show, compared to other basic cable shows it is below par in terms of ratings. This finale audience of 2.8 million wouldn’t place it in the Top 25 cable shows. AMC is rightfully promoting that Mad Men is “the most upscale drama in basic cable, with 50% of that demo having household income in excess of $100,000.” A similar pitch was mentioned at the conclusion of last season.

Last night the third season of Mad Men premiered on AMC. The 10:00 p.m. EST airing drew an audience of 2.8 million, a new record for the series.

Given last night’s performance and overall viewership during the first two seasons, Mad Men should average just over 2.5 million viewers per episode this season, which would be a substantial improvement for the series but still considerably lower than the 5+ million audiences that top cable series normally pull in.

Regardless of relative audience levels, Mad Men is certainly a success just based on the critical acclaim and awards it has garnered- Mad Men won a Best Drama Emmy in 2008, a first for any basic cable series, and it recently got nominated for again. The show’s success also seems to be spreading within AMC; sister show Breaking Bad recently also got nominated for an Emmy in Best Drama. AMC’s twin nominations place it at the top of the prestigious category.